The Fairfax Resolves: Part Two
High Stakes, Challenging Parliament
Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the Fairfax Resolves, a series of resolutions adopted on July 18, 1774, by a committee of citizens in Fairfax County, Virginia. These resolutions articulated the colonists' grievances against the British Parliament and defended American rights as the rights of Englishmen. The Fairfax Resolves are significant because they are a radically conservative interpretation of the British imperial constitution and were authored primarily by George Mason and George Washington. Part one on the Resolves can be found here.
One of the pieces lacking in American education is the history of England. The American Constitutional debates were shaped by the lives of the Founders, lives lived under the English Constitution which governed the British Empire. Their understanding of liberty, law, equity, procedure, police, etc, all were English in mindset. Too much attention has been diverted by appeals to the ancient Israelites, Romans, and Greeks. The Founders were well-read on those peoples, but, and this is critical, their experience as lawyers, soldiers, diplomats, pastors, etc, were in the English system. One point you find from studying lots of history is that rights and liberties are contextualized by culture. If we speak of universal human rights, we are both speaking nonsense and speaking truth about the power of Anglo-Protestant thought, which produced the post-World War Two settlements that created the United Nations and the structure of modern international law. Today, many people attack that system as Euro-centric. In my opinion, that is not a very effective attack because it is simply a statement of fact that the Europeans and the European offshoot society of America designed the system. Of course, their assumption dominates it; who else would it be?
Oddly, though, Americans too often do not see how the American Revolutionary period was peculiarly English. The French (1789) and early 19th-century Latin American revolutions failed to produce a stable and prosperous system in the United States because they were not English. Their cultural assumptions, philosophies, and histories led them to make different choices while trying to imitate America. It did not work. Understanding pre-1776 English should be a goal of Americans who want to understand the Founders. Okay, off my hobby horse. Back to the Fairfax Resolves.
So, I left off after Resolution 3 in the first post because I believe the first trio sets up the stakes of the document. Remember, this was an argument about the place of the colonies and their leadership within the British imperial Constitution and centuries of evolution in the relationship between the Crown, People, and Parliament.
