Abstract
George Berkeley published The Querist in three yearly installments between 1735 and 1737 in Dublin and London. But this is not quite accurate. For “publication” in the eighteenth-century usually required the author to have a direct working relationship with his/her printer. Berkeley, however, remained at his bishopric in Cloyne in Southern Ireland during that period and could not have been involved in managing the details of publication. His “editors,” Samuel Madden in Dublin and Sir John Percival in London, actually transmitted Berkeley’s manuscript to the printers and saw it through to publication. We do not have many details concerning the process of production nor any of the correspondence concerning the corrections of the text, if any existed. Consequently, it seems futile to pose all the technical bibliographical questions typically provoked by the publications of important texts— from “Why this printer?” to “Who corrected the galleys?”
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Notes
The materials for this short biographical introduction come from the Luce (1949) and Berman (1994).
A fine volume that weaves together the experiences of two dozen “Milordos and Bear Leaders,” i.e., young rich men and their tutors, on their itineraries through France and Italy see Hudson (1993). Hudson claims that Berkeley was an early “discoverer” of the ancient temples at Paestum (p. 215), which would put Berkeley within miles of the hometown of that forerunner of conceptual ontology, Parmenides. Hudson, however, does not use the very interesting journal Berkeley kept as bear leader in the “wilds” of Sicily and Tarento.
John Arbuthnot wrote to Swift on October 19, 1714: “Poor Philosopher Berkley; has now the idea of health, which was very hard to produce in him, for he had an idea of a strange feaver upon him so strong that it was very had to destroy it by introducing a contrary one,” Swift (1963ii: 137).
For a definitive account of the machinations of the “Law System” and the peculiarly “modern” personality behind its screen see Murphy (1997). For the South Sea Company’s vicissitudes see Carswell (1960). The literary aspect of the Bubbles is increasingly attracting attention since the major literary figures of the day—Pope, Swift, and Montesquieu—took a hand in satirizing it. Defoe, in contrast, wrote of it in his prophet’s mantle: “I appeal to all the world, whether any man that is entrusted with other men’s money (whether publik or private is not the question) ought to be seen in Exchange Alley ... let you citizens of London have a care of a bear-skin Court, and a stock-jobbing ministry, when Exchange Alley shall be transposed to the Exchequer, and the statesmen shall make a property of the brokers,” Defoe (1979: 273–75).
Marx (1909i: 827).
See Brewer (1990: 114) for the debt figures and Wilson (1965: 365, for the population figure.
Brewer (1990: 117 and 126).
Marx (1909i: 827).
Schubert (1988: 303). For a blow-by-blow description of the Bubbles see the Appendix to this Episode.
The first story is told in Minton (1975: 183–84), although I do not see a reference to it in the standard texts concerning the South Sea Bubble. The second is by Carswell (1960: 132).
Carswell (1960: 95). Stair and Law were fellow Scots and Law tried to “turn” Stair often with offers of Mississippi stock as he did other Scottish investors who joined the other 30,000 foreigners in the speculating mob on rue Quincampoix.
For a discussion of the phenomenological structure of financial crises like the 1720 Bubbles see Kindleberger (1989). He discusses the notion of “displacement” on pp. 46–49 in the context of Hyman Minsky’s model of crises. There is a huge literature on the very possibility of “bubbles” in markets where rationality reigns. For a short bibliography see Weller (1987). The theoretical existence of so-called “rational bubbles” in rational-expectation models was demonstrated in Blanchard and Watson (1982). But whether there have ever been any such creatures and, in particular, whether the 1720 Bubbles were rational, irrational, or even bubbles is still a matter of debate among rational-expectation theorists, for example, see Garber (1990). For a critique of the rational-expectation approach to Bubbles, see Appendix A of Kindleberger (1989) and well as the debate in Kindleberger and Laffargue (1982).
The apparent demise of the Spanish colonial empire is described in Lynch (1989). He writes: “The history of the colonial monopoly between 1714 and 1750 is a history of steady erosion, inadequate defense, and futile debate, in spite of which the Indies remained an asset to Spain”(p. 144). A very useful discussion of the South Sea Company’s operations in the slave trade to Spanish America can be found in Palmer (1981). The effective period of the Company’s involvement is from 1714, when the Spain granted the asiento to Britain, to 1739, the beginning of the War of Jenkin’s Ear. Palmer estimates that in that twenty-five year period the South Sea Company delivered 74,760 slaves to Spanish America from Africa (with no estimate of the losses of life en route), cf. Palmer (1981: 110).
A taste of the problem of dislodging Spain from its colonies was what happened to the Scotch Darien project in 1695. It brought a good part of the investment funds of Scottish capitalists as well as hundreds of settlers to bear on a project of controlling the area which is now known as Panama (the Isthmus of Darien). The project was attacked by the Spanish fleet and the few survivors managed only with great difficulty to return to Scotland.
Minton (1975: 149). The Duke of Saint-Simon’s discussion of the carrying off of “a quantity of public creatures” is in Saint-Simon (1910: 1175–76). For a discussion of the Deficiency Law see Williams (1984: 106–7).
Sperling (1962: 32) on the first reference, and Minton (1975: 122–23) on the second.
Hamilton (1936: 59–60). For a discussion of the Law System’s money creation (and specie-defetishization) capacities see Murphy (1997: 213–30).
Dickson (1967: 141–45). Dickson states that average loan was £4,900, but that would mean that £11,270,000 were lent.
Calculated using Brewer (1990: 89–91).
For wages and prices see Hamilton (1936). Hamilton calculates that prices rose by 88.4 percent between May 1716 and May 1720 while real wages dropped by about 25 percent in the same period. Given the experience of Law’s System, it is not surprising that Cantillon and Quesney become the important economic thinkers in the generation that followed.
Marx (1970: 125–37); Simmel (1978: 238–47); Keynes (1936).
Braudel (1982: 398–99).
Marx (1970: 134).
Simmel (1978: 241).
Quoted on p. 51 of Ashton (1969), original published in 1898. John Law’s gambling career is brilliantly analyzed by Antoin Murphy in Murphy (1997: 34–44). He writes: “Another element in Law’s gambling persona that is worth investigating is the contrast of the dual personality that he presented, on the one hand the gambler or rake and on the other the serious economic thinker. How can one reconcile these seemingly different personalities? They may be reconciled by carefully examining the role of Law the gambler. Professional gamblers know that it pays to show another face, to feed one’s opponents with a different image than the real self” (p. 39).
Cf. Ashton (1969: 53–56). Gambling and amorous adventures seemed to be ways for a wealthy woman of the eighteenth century to exercise power outside of the home, since politics, the church, and mercantile enterprise were largely banned. Also, the feminine and feminizing character of financial capital, which was typically seen as metonymous with gambling, is discussed in a fine article by Ingrassia (1995). Ingrassia points out that women played a major part in the actual business of buying and selling of stocks, lottery tickets and insurance policies (p. 201). Moreover, Credit, Stock-jobbing and Speculation were described with feminine imagery in the literature of the period, from satirical street ballads to the epistles of Pope. The operative contrast was between feminine credit (ruled by fancy, fiction, and luxury) versus the serious business of land and mercantile exchange which is “solid, rational, or honest.” In this distinction, one can find the generative kernel of much “country” discourse.
Ashton (1969: 56).
Cf. Thomas (1971: 120–23).
Brenner and Brenner (1990: 62).
Burke (1978: 240). Similar points could be made of seventeenth century France and the Company of the Holy Sacrament.
Brenner and Brenner (1990: 103–12). Indeed, one might well see that the way in which the “superstitions” concerning probabilities were only eliminated by the introduction of other magics of the commodity form. So the end of “luck” and “divine grace” under the scrutiny of the mathematics of expected utility is managed by a new magic of autonomous commodities and invisible hands.
One might argue that it took almost three centuries, if Keynes and von Neumann are considered the initiators of “the probabilistic revolution” in economic theory.
An excellent study of the history of probability and its application in the eighteenth century is Daston (1988); the new trend in studies that link the history of probability with social institutions and processes (á la Foucaulf) can be traced to Hacking (1975a); another important book in this field is Shapiro (1983).
There was a transformation of the meaning of “superstition” in this period Before 1650 it meant “false religion,” but after 1650 it referred to “irrational fears,” according to Burke (1978: 241).
Cf. Daston (1978: 138–87).
Daston (1978: 139).
Ashton (1969: 252).
Swift (1966: 248–59).
For an interesting discussion of the politics of magic in the Renaissance see Couliano (1987).
See Murphy (1997: 34–44) for an account of John Law as a gambler. He writes: “Though Law made a fortune out of gambling it is inaccurate to describe him as a gambler in the traditional sense of the term. His gambling activities involved his use of his mathematical skills to calculate rapidly the most advantageous gambling odds allied to his adoption of the key position at the gaming tables, that of banker” (p. 37). For a description of other Gamesters of the early eighteenth century see Lucas (1971).
See Braudel (1981), especially Chapter 7.
See Rotman (1987) and Caffentzis (1995b: 20–21).
For a magisterial presentation of French monetary history see Spooner (1972), the quotation and the discussion of the billets de monnaie is on p. 203. Another short, institutionally contextualized presentation of the billet de monnaie story is to be found in van der Wee (1977: 378).
See Caffentzis (1989: 120–21).
See Minton (1975: 186).
For an analysis of Law as a monetary crank, although an “ingenious” one, see the rather cranky Rist (1966).
After all, the South Sea Company and the Western Company were founded on the African slave trade and the promise to further exploit and expropriate the indigenous Americans. Similarly they pinned their success on making the rest of the bourgeoisie of France and England individual collaborators in the slaveiy/genocide project, instead of not so innocent by-standers. For an interesting discussion of the similarities of the past and present see Strange (1986).
Braudel (1981: 439–40).
See the beautiful maps that illustrate the end of the reign of silver in the French mints in the period between 1701 and 1725 in Spooner (1972: 206–7 and 243–45); for the international picture that led to the formation of the “gold standard” in this period see Villar (1976).
See the development of Foucault’s early archeology in Foucault (1970) and Rotman’s development of Foucault’s effort in Rotman (1987). This period of fantastic formal monetary creativity has not been carefiilly mapped. This is not surprising, given the complexity of the task, which cannot be described as a simple transition from substance to function in the economic world. An attempt to provide such a map would require a set of categories that can be deployed to differentiate the nodal points of the field. This system of categories can be described in the following Table I:(Table) All the so-called money substitutes would seem to fit in category A, the instruments of credit in category B, the field of imaginary monies of account in category C, and field of inconvertible fiat monies in category D.
Minton(1975: 141–42).
Parallel to this is the definitive decline of those portraits of merchants with coffers of coin that were so popular in the seventeenth century.
Referring to footnote 49, we should note that algebraic variables and differential operators, though similar in their conceptual distance from the fields they range over or map, are, formally speaking, separate species. Just as repre¬senting differs from promising or betting, variables differ from operators. Imaginary money of account, which is notionally translatable but never identical to any actual sum of gold, silver and copper metal (either as coin or bullion), has an autonomy that representatives or deferred promises do not. Finally, a self-defined, reflexive field of fiat values, though translatable into metallic or imaginary money fields is never identical to either. This is a period, therefore, when two fields of values as well as a vast expansion of types of variables and operators over these fields come into being. The logical heterogeneity of monetary fields, variables, operators opened up (formally and practically) possibilities of infinite recursion and application. Thus, a monetary substitute could be the object of a promise or a bet, and it could range over values in a field of metal, imaginary, or fiat money; but this promise or bet can become a monetary substitute ranging over a field of values different from the field of the original monetary substitute, etc. Moreover, the existence of two or more fields of monetary values creates the possibilities of new spaces of correlations between values in the fields. The formal complexity of the monetary world had just become truly prodigious. If the contemporary reader feels a slight pang of nausea contemplating it, after nearly three centuries of living in a world of monetary spaces replicating themselves to infinity with apparently autonomous vigor, then one can imagine the emotions of those who had just sailed out into these perplexing seas.
Simmel (1978: 256).
For a discussion of the up-scale pornography market see Foxon (1965); a more extensive discussion of enlightenment pornography and libertinism can be found in Wagner (1988); for the cult of libertine excess see Turner (1989); for an overview of upper-class adultery and other aspects of sexual life in the period see Stone (1977), especially the section “New Practices: the Rise of Libertinism,” pp. 529–42.
See Turner (1989: 106) for the former, or Stone (1977: 543) for the second explanation.
For a contemporary commentary on this duplicitous attitude Bernard Mandeville’s A Modest Defense of Public Stews (London 1725).
Turner (1989: 106).
Simmel (1978: 257).
Sperling (1962: 67–76).
Craig (1946: 112). Sir John writes in defense of Newton: “the transaction was merely a transfer from one South Sea stock to another of similar standing, and that the ‘loss’ of £20,000 was the profit which might have been taken on the original investment by selling out at the top of the market. Catherine was a hard woman.”
An Essay, pp. 330, 336. Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year was also inspired by the Bubbles and the Marseilles plague while Law claimed that “credit would have been reestablished [in May 1720] if the plague had not occurred.” Minton and other students of Law’s System agree that the plague had a crucial impact on Law’s System: “During the four years Law was active in France, trade with Africa increased sevenfold. The closing down of Marseilles and other ports of entry in southern France in 1720–21 was not what Law [in the previous quote] was referring to directly; it was the loss of confidence that followed the news that Marseilles was being ravaged by disease.” Minton (1975: 212–13). Law certainly was of this opinion. According to Murphy, Law “wrote in a short memoir in 1723, “Effetsque lapeste arrivee en Provence en 1720apu causer sur le credit” that the plague played a key role in destroying the System in that it caused the public to switch its demand away from paper money to specie because the latter was regarded as a better means of payment for the purchase of goods and necessities in a plague-stricken environment,” Murphy (1997: 288).
An Essay, p. 337.
An Essay, pp. 336–37.
DM36
DM12.
Berkeley argues that it is in Newton’s conception of absolute space that the confusion of principles climaxes. Moreover, Berkeley’s attack on absolute space was an unequivocal signal to a Newtonian—who might dismiss Berkeley’s “instru-mentalist” interpretations of mechanics and even his ultimately propagandists use of Cartesian dualism—that Berkeley was still dangerous. The three different understandings of “principle” enter into the Newtonian notion of absolute space, for it is space that exists after the annihilation of all bodies (and hence beyond immediate sense and experience) but which is still the place of God (who must be somewhere, according to Newton) and the perfect stage for the application of the laws of motion (the working of the perfect mechanic). However, Newton claimed to give to sense and experience a way of verifying the existence of this absolute space through his famous “bucket experiment.” Berkeley demolished the “idea of absolute space” by pointing out that any attempt to conceive it is literally self-deceptive: “We are sometimes deceived by the fact that when we imagine the removal of all other bodies, yet we suppose our own body to remain” [DM, para. 55]. Just as in the “master argument” in the Dialogues, Berkeley claimed that a metaphysical alienation of the self is at the root of materialist philosophies. For imagining this absolute zero-body space involves the secret positing of the bodily image of the imaginer in this nothing to make something out of it. That is, Newton confused principle (1) with principle (3) in attempting to imagine this zero realm. In his attempt to give absolute space the support of principle (2), he failed to recognize some simple facts about the System of the World that he is quite conscious of in other part of the Principia, viz., the water in the revolving bucket does not move in truly circular motion (since it shares in the motion of the earth) and that the motion of the water rising to the sides of the bucket is far from circular motion. A good discussion of the critique of absolute space in De Motu is Brook (1973: 125–45).
The 1736 statute which repealed the legal framework of the witch hunt in England was still in the future, but Berkeley had considerable difficulties formulating a new discourse on evil or a discourse on a new evil. As Russell writes in Russell (1980: 123): “Belief in diabolic Satanic witchcraft declined rapidly in the eighteenth century, virtually disappearing save in legend, literature, and jest.”
An Essay, p. 337.
See Tausig (1980: 96 and passim).
A classic discussion on the discourse of folly and mental pathology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries see Foucault (1965).
An Essay, p. 323.
Benedict Anderson in Anderson (1983) argues that it is this experience of co-presence defined by the modern novel that a new national community was formed. Perhaps he should have included the stock price and foreign exchange pages in the fledgling business press along with the novel.
Letters, p. 135.
Goodwin (1936: 665).
Connolly (1992: 101).
The Deanery of Deny had the second largest Dean’s income in Ireland, after that of Down. It was one of the three truly lucrative deaneries on the Island and the bishopric (considered to be the wealthiest) was continuously held by Englishmen during the later half of the eighteenth century. For further details see Akenson (1971: 39–45).
Goodwin (1936: 656n).
Josset(1971: 154).
Lecky (1893: 451).
Swift and Lecky have the figure £108,000, which is incorrect, according to Goodwin (1936: 125).
Craig (1946: 116).
Goodwin (1936: 653).
Goodwin (1936: 650–51).
Appendix B in Swift (1941: 177).
Goodwin (1936: 687).
Report of Newton’s Assay of Wood’s Coinage, Appendix C, Swift (1941: 187).
Appendix C, Swift (1941: 189).
From Appendix C, “Report of the Privy Council Committee,” Swift (1941: 193); for an explanation of this “extraordinary” non-compliance see Goodwin (1936: 660–61), although Godwin’s account is both too bureaucratic and tautological to be completely satisfactory. One need not have been a Walpole to believe that there were “secret springs and supports” for this resistance.
“Report of the Privy Council Committee,” in Swift (1941: 200).
“Report of the Privy Council Committee,” in Swift (1941: 202).
The term justly enough has an Irish origin, although it is an anachronisms in this context. It comes from the name of Captain Boycott, a land agent ostracized by his neighbors during the Land League agitations in Ireland in 1880.
Swift (1941: 11).
Swift (1941: 59).
Swift (1941: 63).
Swift (1941: 61).
For an edited version of Molyneux’s Case, see Probyn (1979).
Goodwin (1936: 666).
From a letter from Walpole to Newcastle on 1 Sept. 1724, quoted in Hayton (1984: 107–8).
Cf. Johnston (1974: 62) for the 1692 incident and Chap. 3 for an overview of the parliamentary and administrative structure of eighteenth-century Ireland. For a more sociological introductory analysis of this structure see Dickson (1987: 71–79).
Swift (1941: 124): “Grievances have always preceded Supplies.”
Of course, Wood received £3000 per annum for eight years for his surrender of the patent according to Lecky (1893: 455). What happened to the coins themselves? “The coins were withdrawn and sent to America, where they circulated with the Rosa Americana half-pence—also a production of Wood.” Josset (1971: 344).
From a letter from Bishop Nicolson to Archbishop Wake October 12, 1725 quoted in Swift (1941: xxxi).
Lecky (1893: 488).
Connelly (1992: 108).
For example, did the half-pence crisis bring the “Undertaker System” into existence? It was originally suggested by Goodwin (1936: 674) and the first full-length investigation of the connection was J. L. McCracken’s M.A. thesis in 1941, “The Undertakers in Ireland and their Relations with the Lords Lieutenant 1724–1771,” according to Hayton (1984: 234). Hayton argues against this thesis in Hayton (1979) and is supported by Dickson (1987: 70–71).
See L. M. Cullen’s classic refutation in Cullen (1972), he mentions and dismisses the Wood crisis on p. 36.
For the details on the issues of copper currency in Ireland in the eighteenth century see Josset (1971: 161–162, 348–49).
Jossett (1971: 345).
The Wood’s Half-pence Affair certainly had a major impact on Irish monetary thought in the following decade. No Anglo-Irish writer could forget that the quantity of money is not the only important variable for a well-functioning economy. A proper ratio of the variety of coins, especially the amount of the smallest unit, is crucial as well. For example, Sir John Browne writing five years after the Affair in A scheme of the Money Matters of Ireland (Dublin, 1729) noted that “lessor Coins are ... like the more liquid particles of the Blood, without which, the whole Mass would be in danger of stagnating” (p. 14).
The reasons for his departing from London were complex. A. A. Luce comments on them in his The Life of George Berkeley (London: Nelson, 1949), p. 136. Apparently, one of the provisions of the Bermuda patent was that he had to vacate his Deanery within a year after going to the island. Benjamin Rand, in Rand (1932: 15), concluded that “it would have been inprovident to have taken such a risk until it became certain that the government grant would be paid.”
For a discussion of “book-keeping barter” and other important details of Atlantic monetary conditions in this period see McCusker (1978), especially pp. 117–31 on New England.
For a discussion of “wampumpeage” in Rhode Island see Potter (1865). By 1662 there was a collapse in the wampumpeage-coin exchange rate in 1662 and the shells were no longer used for tax payments.
Rediker (1987: 66).
Updike (1907: 156).
For a thorough discussion of the Anglican church in colonial America see Woolverton (1984). He is especially good on the activities of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).
The engraving is reproduced as the frontispiece of Bridenbaugh (1962). The description of the engraving is to be found on p. x. The story behind the engraving is worth telling since it reveals the strong, vituperous emotions surrounding the Anglican Church’s efforts to create an Episcopacy in America. On January 9, 1751, Bishop Seeker sent a long letter to Horatio Walpole recommending a plan to send bishops to the colonies as part of his unrelenting, but ever thwarted campaign to Anglicanize America. Secker died on August 3, 1768 leaving £1,000 to help establish a colonial bishop. He also left instructions to have his letter published. It was widely reprinted in the colonies and created a storm of “noise and clamour” about a threatened episcopacy. This controversy was an immediate religious cause of the Revolution and the post-revolutionary demand for the separation of church and state, according to Bridenbaugh (1962: 98n, 270, 290).
The colonists’ episcopophobia is nicely summarized by D.H. Yoder: “They feared that their Lordships would come endowed, as in England, with political as well as spiritual authority. New Englanders lost valuable sleep envisioning bishops’ palaces arising on the sacred Yankee soil, Church courts to try Congregational ‘heretics’ (thus reversing an old New England custom), a greedy clergy with control over marriages and wills, and even mitred bishops dominating the colonial assemblies.” Quoted in Neill (1958: 224–25).
Christie (1966: 14–15).
A Proposal, p. 214.
Gaustad (1979:71).
James (1975: 163–64).
Kiven (1973: 16). Kiven notes that as early as 1652 a statute was passed in Providence and Warwick to prevent the introduction of slavery, but it was largely ignored.
Kiven (1973: 16). Kiven notes that as early as 1652 a statute was passed in Providence and Warwick to prevent the introduction of slavery, but it was largely ignored.
For the text of Keith’s “An Exortation” and other, mostly Quaker, pre-1729 anti-slavery tracts see Bruns, ed. (1977: 3–31).
James (1975: 219).
Coughtiy(1981:45).
James (1975: 226).
Jay Coughtry deals with the distributional and financial aspects of the Rhode Island slave trade in Chapter 6 of Coughtry (1981), “The West Indian Connection: Marketing Slaves in the New World.” The slavers were always anxious to get “hard cash,” but in most cases they had to accept “short-sighted” bills of exchange (of three-, six-, or nine-month length), or even colonial currency. But the volatility of the money form was matched by volatility of slaves. The following 1707 case is worth considering: “Whereas, the body of a negro man which was a late slave to Mr. Thos. Mumford, of Kingstown [Rhode Island], and [who had] committed the horrid and barbarous murder upon the wife of the said Mumford, about two weeks since, as is justly concluded, was found dead upon the shore of Little Compton, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay, which said negro, it is believed and judged, after he had committed said murder, threw himself into the sea and drowned himself, by reason he would not be taken alive and the said negro’s body being now brought into the harbor of Newport: It is ordered by this Assembly, that his head, legs, and arms be cut from his body, and hung up in some public place, near the town, to public view and his body to be burnt to ashes, that it may, if [it] please God, be something a terror to others from perpetrating of the like barbarity for the future.” Bartlett (1859: 27).
Jay Coughtry notes that in West Africa Newport-transported New England rum was by mid-century the equivalent of hard currency: “Rum also became the only item, with the exception of gold, that could be used alone to purchase large quantities of slaves; and, like gold, rum achieved currency status on the coast. Not simply traded alone or in combinations with other goods, rum became a standard by which other items were measured. Slave prices were commonly quoted in gallons, as were a dozen lesser products. Its value, which naturally fluctuated according to supply, was carefully watched, and, when necessary, regulated. Conferences, fixing the price of rum vis-a-vis slaves or gold, were common from mid-century on, and often involved two or three governors from the forts, and two dozen captains,” Coughtry (1981: 111).
On Berkeley’s connection with the Society, see Gaustad (1979: 17).
James (1975: 193).
These rules are to be found in the introduction of Callender (1843: 13–18).
James (1975: 238).
Quoted in Gaustad (1979: 93).
For a discussion of the creation of a racist state from the administration of slaveiy in Virginia, see Morgan (1975: 327–37). This racist compounding of slavery was not countered by the Anglican Church which was Virginia’s established church. As Woolverton sadly points out in Woolverton (1984: 70), “As it was, Christian protection, guidance, and freedom from slavery itself were not causes”
which attracted [Anglican] ministers, subservient as they were in Virginia to political and mercantile leadership. Colonies more purely motivated by religion— Catholic, Quaker, and Puritan—would question the treatment of black slaves and even the institution of slavery itself. Episcopalians did not, and the few who did were given short shrift.
The “Great Awakening” exploded on the colonial scene with the arrival of George Whitefield in 1739. By early 1742, “the revival was in full swing. . . . Charles Brockwell spoke of the ‘convulsions into which the whole Country is thrown by a set of Enthusiasts . . . [who] stole about harangueing the admiring Vulgar in extempore nonsense.’ To make matters worse, ‘Men, Women, Children, Servants & Nigros are now become (as they phrase it) Exhorters,’” Woolverton (1984: 192). At the core of Whitefield’s “Great Awakening” theology was a conception of conversion that was “sudden, convulsive, and exempt from human calculation.” This view clashed with the Anglican hierarchy’s that saw conversion as “a gradual and co-operative Work of the Holy Spirit, joining in our Understandings, and leading us on by Reason and Persuasion, from one Degree to another, of Faith, good Dispositions, Acts, and Habits of Piety,” Woolverton (1984: 193–94).
Luce and Jessop, eds. (1955vii: 69). References to Onesimus and the Ethiopian Eunuch were standard in Christian discussions of slavery and conversion. Onesimus was the subject of Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. Apparently Onesimus (whose name means “profitable” or “useful”), had robbed his master, Philemon, a Christian, and left his home. But he went to Paul and asked for help in mediating with his master. Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon with an epistle after he converted him. Paul asked Philemon to receive his slave back and not punish him: “If then you count me as a partner, receive him as you would me. But if he has wronged you or owes anything, put that on my account. I, Paul, am writing with my own hand. I will repay—not to mention to you that you owe me even your own self besides” (verses 17–19). Berkeley uses this story to support his claim that Christianity is perfectly compatible with slavery. But it might very well send shivers up the spines of plantation owners, for Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave—a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord” (verse 16). The Ethiopian Eunuch was arguably the first gentile converted to Christianity (Acts 8: 26–40). He traditionally symbolized the readiness of the gentile world for conversion, because in the story, “the Ethiopian takes an active role in his own conversion. He invites Philip [the Christian deacon] to join him in his chariot; he asks Philip for interpretation of the scroll he has been reading; he actively seeks baptism; and he goes on his way rejoicing,” Gaventa (1992: 667). The fact that he was an African made the reference even more appropriate for Berkeley’s sermon.
For example, he argues for the compatibility of slavery and Christianity in Passive Obedience and in The Querist.
AL, i, 1.
For an extensive discussion of Locke’s view of African slavery see Caffentzis (1989: 193–202).
On the SPG’s branding of its slaves see Bruns (1977: 14). The quotation from Bishop Gibson’s letter is from Greene (1968: 270).
At the same time Berkeley was preaching in favor of slave baptism at Trinity Church in Newport, “in 1730, a missionary at Bristol, [Rhode Island] Rev. John Usher, wrote to the SPG that several negroes had made applications to him for baptism. He was not permitted to comply with their request, their masters forbidding that he do so,” Bates (1921: 3–4). But eventually the SPG did make headway in Rhode Island and by 1743 Rev. Honeyman reported that he had more than “100 Negroes who constantly attended the public worship” while in 1741, an other friend of Berkeley’s, Dr. McSparran, reported that he had a class of fifty to sixty Negroes, as noted in Greene (1968: 273).
McManus (1966: 70–75); Piersen (1988: 71).
Gasper (1981: 79–81); Rediker (unpublished manuscript).
George Berkeley, “Anniversary Sermon before the SPG,” in Luce and Jessop, eds (1955vii: 114–28).
Perkins (1994: 35).
Perkins (1994: 30).
Dr. Douglass’s words were quoted in Hammond (1957: 22).
Perkins (1988: 170).
James (1975: 172).
Perkins (1988: 181–82).
Potter (1865: 102).
James (1975: 184).
There were eight “banks” instituted: 1715-£40,000; 1721-£40,000; 1728-£40,000; 1731-£60,000; 1733-£104,000; 1738-£100,000; 1740-£20,000; 1743-£40,000.
Hammond (1957: 22) for Douglass; Brewer (1990: 115); the population approximation is from Owen (1974: 125).
Perkins (1988: 177–78) for the fluctuating reactions of the British merchants towards colonial paper money policies.
From the 1820 Works of George Berkeley, p. xxxvii.
Cf. Governor Ward’s panegyric-eulogy on “old tenor” paper currency made to the Board of Trade on January 9, 1740 is discussed in Hammond (1957: 19–21) and James (1975: 178–80).
The Address can be found in Bartlett (1859: 459–61).
James (1975: 176).
Cf, the letters to Redwood from Antigua in the late 1720 and 1730s in Massachusetts Historical Society (1919: 1–27) are full of slave transactions; see also Coughtry (1981: 50, 80) (where we find him selling a slaver in 1744 for 1000 pounds).
James (1975: 237).
Massachusetts Historical Society (1919: 46–47).
Cf. Coughtry (1981: 52, 87).
Gaustad(1979:94).
Coughtry(1981:86).
Cf. Coughtry’s valuable Appendix in Coughtry (1981: 239–85), Rhode Island Slaving Voyages 1709–1807. For Norton see Bartlett (1859: 199–200). Sydney V. James writes of Bours in James (1975: 191), “Bours ... for years was a leader of the [Anglican] church, the cultural enterprises of Newport and the General Assembly, where he was often the speaker of the House of Deputies although he was an outspoken foe of paper currency.”
The remaining names are the Almy’s (3), John Freebody, John Lawrence, Edward Searegreas. Job Almy was a “captain” Bartlett (1859: 200) and he appears often in the Records, as does Christopher, Christopher Jr. and William Almy, but the others only show up as names.
Callender(1843: 15).
Essay, p. 323.
Essay, p. 323.
As Hammond summarized the case made against the Rhode Islanders during Parliamentary debates: “Rhode Islanders . . . authorized issues of paper money, borrowed it, purchased goods and other property, depreciated it with successive issues, used it when depreciated to repay their indebtedness, and realized egregious profits.” They operated something like a monetary perpetual motion machine, see Hammond (1957: 25). The depreciation of Massachusetts currency with respect to sterling can be seen in this table from McCusker (1978): Bostonians blamed much of this depreciation on the “irresponsible” Rhode Islanders.
Bartlett (1859: 456–61).
Quoted in Bartlett (1859: 461). For some of the behind the scenes jockeying concerning the Address and its impact in London see the letters of Richard Partidge, Rhode Island’s agent in London, to Deputy-Governor Wanton in February and March of 1732. Partridge was definitely worried that the controversy would open up an opportunity for London to change the Charter. “I wish the Gentlemen (many of whom are my Friends too) would duly [appreciate] the evil Tendency and bad Consequences of this their Undertaking and were thoroughly Sensible of the valuable Privileges they enjoy above many provinces in our Plantations.” Kimbal, ed. (1902: 20–28). Why Partridge was writing to Wanton instead of to the lame duck Governor Jenckes is another matter.
James (1975: 178).
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Caffentzis, C.G. (2000). Berkeley’s Monetary Education. In: Exciting the Industry of Mankind George Berkeley’s Philosophy of Money. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 170. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9522-3_2
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