Thanksgiving isn't a New Zealand holiday, but giving thanks should be a universal trait.

Robert Green Ingersoll was the nineteenth-century's Christopher Hitchens—a famous and crusading atheist—like Hitchens except Ingersoll was kinder, and not a Trotskyite. And he was full of gratitude. This, here, was just a portion (the final part, starting page 58) ) of his famous 1897 Thanksgiving Sermon [hat tip Jerry Coyne] ...

A Thanksgiving Sermon

by Robert Green Ingersoll

Whom shall we thank? 

Standing here at the close of the 19th century — amid the trophies of thought — the triumphs of genius — here under the flag of the Great Republic — knowing something of the history of man — here on this day that has been set apart for thanksgiving, I most reverently thank the good me,. the good women of the past, I thank the kind fathers, the loving mothers of the savage days.  I thank the father who spoke the first gentle word, the mother who first smiled upon her babe. I thank the first true friend.

I thank the savages who hunted and fished that they and their babes might live. I thank those who cultivated the ground and changed the forests into farms — those who built rude homes and watched the faces of their happy children in the glow of fireside flames — those who domesticated horses, cattle and sheep — those who invented wheels and looms and taught us to spin and weave — those who by cultivation changed wild grasses into wheat and corn, changed bitter things to fruit, and worthless weeds to flowers, that sowed within our souls the seeds of art. 

I thank the poets of the dawn — the tellers of legends — the makers of myths — the singers of joy and grief, of hope and love. I thank the artists who chiseled forms in stone and wrought with light and shade the face of man. I thank the philosophers, the thinkers, who taught us how to use our minds in the great search for truth. 

I thank the astronomers who explored the heavens, told us the secrets of the stars, the glories of the constellations — the geologists who found the story of the world in fossil forms, in memoranda kept in ancient rocks, in lines written by waves, by frost and fire — the anatomists who sought in muscle, nerve and bone for all the mysteries of life — the chemists who unraveled Nature’s work that they might learn her art — the physicians who have laid the hand of science on the brow of pain, the hand whose magic touch restores — the surgeons who have defeated Nature’s self and forced her to preserve the lives of those she laboured to destroy. I thank the discoverers of chloroform and ether, the two angels who give to their beloved sleep, and wrap the throbbing brain in the soft robes of dreams. 

I thank the great inventors — those who gave us movable type and the press, by means of which great thoughts and all discovered facts are made immortal — the inventors of engines, of the great ships, of the railways, the cables and telegraphs. I thank the great mechanics, the workers in iron and steel, in wood and stone. I thank the inventors and makers of the numberless things of use and luxury.

I thank the industrious men, the loving mothers, the useful women. They are the benefactors of our race. The inventor of pins did a thousand times more good than all the popes and cardinals, the bishops and priests — than all the clergymen and parsons, exhorters and theologians that ever lived. The inventor of matches did more for the comfort and convenience of mankind than all the founders of religions and the makers of all creeds — than all malicious monks and selfish saints.

I thank the honest men and women who have expressed their sincere thoughts, who have been true to themselves and have preserved the veracity of their souls.

I thank the thinkers of Greece and Rome. Zeno and Epicurus, Cicero and Lucretius. I thank Bruno, the bravest, and Spinoza, the subtlest of men.

I thank Voltaire, whose thought lighted a flame in the brain of man, unlocked the doors of superstition’s cells and gave liberty to many millions of his fellow-men. Voltaire — a name that sheds light. Voltaire — a star that superstition’s darkness cannot quench.

I thank the great poets — the dramatists. I thank Homer and Aeschylus, and I thank Shakespeare above them all. I thank Burns for the heart-throbs he changed into songs. for his lyrics of flame. I thank Shelley for his Skylark, Keats for his Grecian Urn and Byron for his Prisoner of Chillon. I thank the great novelists. I thank the great sculptors. I thank the unknown man who moulded and chiseled the Venus de Milo. I thank the great painters. I thank Rembrandt and Corot. I thank all who have adorned, enriched and ennobled life — all who have created the great, the noble, the heroic and artistic ideals.

I thank the statesmen who have preserved the rights of man. I thank Paine whose genius sowed the seeds of independence in the hearts of ’76. I thank Jefferson whose mighty words for liberty have made the circuit of the globe. I thank the founders, the defenders, the saviors of the Republic. I thank Ericsson, the greatest mechanic of his century, for the monitor. I thank Lincoln for the Proclamation. I thank Grant for his victories and the vast host that fought for the right, — for the freedom of man. I thank them all — the living and the dead.

I thank the great scientists — those who have reached the foundation, the bed-rock — who have built upon facts — the great scientists, in whose presence theologians look silly and feel malicious.

The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men. They forged no chains, built no dungeons, erected no scaffolds — tore no flesh with red hot pincers — dislocated no joints on racks, crushed no hones in iron boots — extinguished no eyes — tore out no tongues and lighted no fagots. They did not pretend to be inspired — did not claim to be prophets or saints or to have been born again. They were only intelligent and honest men. They did not appeal to force or fear. They did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain, nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies.

They did not wound — they healed. They did not kill — they lengthened life. They did not enslave — they broke the chains and made men free. They sowed the seeds of knowledge, and many millions have reaped, are reaping, and will reap the harvest: of joy.

I thank Humboldt and Helmholtz and Haeckel and Buchner. I thank Lamarck and Darwin — Darwin who revolutionized the thought of the intellectual world. I thank Huxley and Spencer. I thank the scientists one and all.

I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear — the dethroners of savage gods — the extinguishers of hate’s eternal fire — the heroes, the breakers of chains — the founders of free states — the makers of just laws — the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields — the heroes whose dungeons became shrines — the heroes whose blood made scaffolds sacred — the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the soldiers of freedom — the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled the world with light.

With all my heart I thank them all.

* * * * 

The separation of church and state is being ignored by laws that officially reference Māori spirituality, customs, and worldviews

The separation of church and state is a principle established back in the Enlightenment era, one recognised in the US Bill of Rights. Establishing "a wall of separation between Church and State," Thomas Jefferson explained the principle in a famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

The principle rests on this compelling point: "that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions," so that neither the Danbury Baptist Association nor any other religious-based group need fear government interference in their right to expressions of religious conscience. 

This was a historic change from centuries of religious persecution. This is a point now unfortunately lost on New Zealand's legislators, who for decades have routinely inserted into law concepts emanating from Māori spirituality, customs, and worldviews, i.e., Māori religion. 

Law, we should be reminded, is a description of the way in which a government proposes to exercise its monopoly on force. As such, we should demand precision, objectivity, and concepts based on protecting individual rights. Instead, as a result of this departure from proper principle we have been delivered law that is imprecise, and riddled with bogus concepts based on a particular religious worldview.

Author and researcher John Robinson lists 35 New Zealand laws that officially reference Māori spirituality, customs, and worldviews — using terms like tikanga, mana whenua, mauri, wairua, and more. Among them are many that might surprise you:

Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA)
Terms: Te Mana o te Wai, kaitiakitanga, mauri, wairua, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Gives legal status to Māori spiritual values when assessing environmental impacts and resource consent.

Water Services Act 2021
Terms: Te Mana o te Wai, kaitiakitanga
Context: Water regulation must consider Māori spiritual views on water’s life force and guardianship.

Local Government Act 2002
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Requires councils to involve Māori in decision-making and give weight to their cultural practices.

Conservation Act 1987
Terms: kaitiakitanga, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Māori beliefs must be considered in conservation efforts and land access.

Waitangi Tribunal Act 1975
Terms: tikanga Māori, Treaty principles
Context: Empowers Māori customs and grievances to be judged by Māori cultural norms.

Environment Canterbury Act 2016
Terms: mana whenua representation
Context: Mandates tribal representation in regional governance based on ancestral authority.

Oranga Tamariki Act 1989
Terms: whakapapa, mana tamaiti, tikanga Māori
Context: Māori child welfare decisions must respect spiritual ancestry and cultural norms.

Education and Training Act 2020
Terms: tikanga Māori, Treaty principles, mana whenua
Context: Embeds Māori values and customs into the public education system.

Climate Change Response Act 2002
Terms: tikanga Māori, kaitiakitanga, Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Context: Climate planning must consider Māori spiritual guardianship of nature.

Crown Minerals Act 1991
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua, Treaty principles
Context: Requires consultation with Māori based on cultural and spiritual claims to land and minerals.

Biosecurity Act 1993
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua, Treaty of Waitangi
Context: Disease and pest control policy must consider Māori views on spiritual and land connections.

Public Health and Disability Act 2000
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana motuhake, Treaty of Waitangi
Context: Health services are required to reflect Māori beliefs and autonomy.

Wildlife Act 1953
Terms: customary rights, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Spiritual and cultural practices are recognized in hunting and wildlife protections.

Forests Act 1949
Terms: tikanga Māori, Treaty of Waitangi
Context: Forest use and protection must consider Māori customs and Treaty rights.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014
Terms: wāhi tapu, wāhi tūpuna, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Sacred and ancestral Māori sites are protected by law.

Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Act 2022
Terms: tikanga Māori, Māori Health Authority, Treaty of Waitangi
Context: Establishes a parallel Māori health system based on cultural values.

Kainga Ora–Homes and Communities Act 2019
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua, Treaty obligations
Context: Housing projects must align with Māori cultural values and Treaty-based consultation.

Land Transport Management Act 2003
Terms: mana whenua, Treaty principles
Context: Māori cultural considerations must be included in transport planning.

Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act 2000
Terms: kaitiakitanga, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Spiritual guardianship and cultural relationships must be respected in marine planning.

Walking Access Act 2008
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Access to land and tracks must consider Māori spiritual and cultural significance.

EEZ and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012
Terms: tikanga Māori, Treaty principles, mana whenua
Context: Deep-sea resource use must consult Māori cultural and spiritual perspectives.

National Parks Act 1980
Terms: kaitiakitanga, wāhi tapu, tikanga Māori
Context: Māori spiritual values influence park management and access.

Marine Reserves Act 1971
Terms: kaitiakitanga, tikanga Māori
Context: Customary guardianship and Māori beliefs influence reserve designation and rules.

Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994
Terms: tikanga Māori
Context: Even activities in Antarctica must respect Māori spiritual customs.

Building Act 2004
Terms: tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Local iwi spiritual and cultural views must be considered in development approvals.

Te Urewera Act 2014
Terms: legal personhood, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Grants a forest legal status as a living ancestor with spiritual significance under Māori belief.

Whanganui River Settlement Act 2017 (Te Awa Tupua)
Terms: legal personhood, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Declares the river a living entity with rights, based on Māori cosmology.

 Taranaki Maunga Settlement Act 2023
Terms: legal personhood, tikanga Māori, mana whenua
Context: Gives Mount Taranaki the same spiritual and legal status as a living being.

Criminal Cases Review Commission Act 2019
Terms: te ao Māori, tikanga Māori
Context: Māori spiritual and cultural views may influence justice processes and reviews.

Trade Marks Act 2002
Terms: mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori
Context: Māori traditional knowledge and customs can affect trademark approvals.

Patents Act 2013
Terms: mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori
Context: Patents can be denied or restricted based on spiritual and cultural beliefs.

Each of these inclusions undermines law, makes its exercise illegitimate and imprecise, and requires by law that all New Zealanders bow to a religion — one based on race — that is not necessarily their own.

As a commenter observes, 

There are also numerous reports/frameworks affirming the Te Ao Maori vision- a powerful and authoritative reference to guide action and establish norms, e.g. Te Rautaki Ao Maori—guidelines for NZ parliamentary process, Matauranga Maori in the Media, and many more.
     NZers are now enmeshed in a web of embedded "cultural references" which decree how to live their lives.

There is neither a moral nor a legitimate legal case for that.

Cities As Centres Of Innovation: Lessons From Edinburgh And Paris

Examining the places where major advances happened is one way to learn about the conditions that foster societal flourishing, human achievement, and prosperity.

Amidst the turmoil of modern times, evidence reveals significant progress across various metrics, from rising life expectancy to declining global poverty. Throughout history, cities have emerged as epicentres of innovation and progress, fostering collaboration, competition, and freedom of thought.

By exploring the unique environments of cities like Edinburgh and Paris, where intellectual liberty thrived, Chelsea Follett uncovers in this guest post the vital role of peace, freedom, and population density in driving human achievement and societal advancement.

Cities As Centres Of Innovation: Lessons From Edinburgh And Paris

by Chelsea Follett

HAS HUMANITY MADE PROGRESS? WITH so many serious problems, it is easy to get the impression that our species is hopeless. Many people view history as one long tale of decay and degeneration since some lost, idealised golden age.

But there has been much remarkable, measurable improvement—from rising life expectancy and literacy rates to declining global poverty. (Explore the evidence for yourself). Today, material abundance is more widespread than our ancestors could have dreamed. And there has been moral progress too. Slavery and torture, once widely accepted, are today almost universally reviled.

Where did all this progress come from? Certain places, at certain times in history, have contributed disproportionately to progress and innovation. Change is a constant, but progress is not. Studying the past may hold the secret to fostering innovation in the present. To that end, I wrote a book titled Centers of Progress: 40 Cities that Changed the World, exploring the places that shaped modern life.

The origin-points of the ideas, discoveries, and inventions that built the modern world were far from evenly or randomly dispersed throughout the globe. Instead, they tended to emerge from cities, even in time periods when most of the human population lived in rural areas. In fact, even before anything that could be called a city by modern standards existed, progress originated from the closest equivalents that did exist at the time. 

Why is that?

“Cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace,” urban economist Edward Glaeser opined in his book The Triumph of the City. Of course, he was hardly the first to observe that positive change often emanates from cities. As Adam Smith noted in 1776, “the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.”

One of the reasons that progress tends to emerge from cities is, simply, people. Wherever more people gather together to “truck, barter, and exchange,” in Smith’s words, that increases their potential to engage in productive exchange, discussion, debate, collaboration, and competition with each other. Cities’ higher populations allow for a finer division of labour, more specialisation, and greater efficiencies in production. Not to mention, a multiplication of knowledge — more minds working together to solve problems. As the writer Matt Ridley notes in the foreword he kindly wrote for Centers of Progress, “Progress is a team sport, not an individual pursuit. It is a collaborative, collective thing, done between brains more than inside them.”

A higher population is sufficient to explain why progress often emerges from cities, but, of course, not all cities become major innovation centres. Progress may be a team sport, but why do certain cities seem to provide ideal playing conditions, and not others?

That brings us to the next thing that most centres of progress share, besides being relatively populous: peace. That makes sense, because if a place is plagued by violence and discord then it is hard for the people there to focus on anything other than survival, and there is little incentive to be productive since any wealth is likely to be looted or destroyed. Smith recognised this truth, and noted that cities, historically, sometimes offered more security from violence than the countryside:

Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals, were in this manner established in cities, at a time when the occupiers of land in the country, were exposed to every sort of violence. But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their necessary subsistence; because, to acquire more, might only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniencies and elegancies of life. That industry, therefore, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence, was established in cities long before it was commonly practised by the occupiers of land in the country. […] Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it.

OF COURSE, NOT ALL CITIES WERE are peaceful. Consider Smith’s own city: Edinburgh. At times, the city was far from stable. But the relatively unkempt and inhospitable locale emerged from a century of instability to take the world by storm. Scotland in the 18th century had just undergone decades of political and economic turmoil. Disruption was caused by the House of Orange’s ousting of the House of Stuart, the Jacobite Rebellions, the failed and costly colonial Darien Scheme, famine, and the 1707 Union of Scotland and England. It was only after things settled down and the city came to enjoy a period of relative peace and stability that Edinburgh rose to reach its potential. Edinburgh was an improbable centre of progress. But Edinburgh proves what people can accomplish, given the right conditions.

During the Scottish Enlightenment centred in Edinburgh, Adam Smith was far from the only innovative thinker in the city. Edinburgh’s ability to cultivate innovators in every arena of human achievement, from the arts to the sciences, seemed almost magical.

Edinburgh gave the world so many groundbreaking artists that the French writer Voltaire opined in 1762 that “today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening.” Edinburgh gave humanity artistic pioneers from the novelist Sir Walter Scott, often called the father of the historical novel, to the architect Robert Adam who, together with his brother James, developed the “Adam style,” which evolved into the so‐​called “Federal style” in the United States after Independence.

And then there were the scientists. Thomas Jefferson, in 1789, wrote, “So far as science is concerned, no place in the world can pretend to competition with Edinburgh.” The Edinburger geologist James Hutton developed many of the fundamental principles of his discipline. The chemist and physicist Joseph Black, who studied at the University of Edinburgh, discovered carbon dioxide, magnesium, and the important thermodynamic concepts of latent heat and specific heat. The anatomist Alexander Monro Secondus became the first person to detail the human lymphatic system. Sir James Young Simpson, admitted to the University of Edinburgh at the young age of fourteen, went on to develop chloroform anesthesia.

Two of the greatest gifts that Edinburgh gave humanity were empiricism and economics. The influential philosopher David Hume was among the early advocates of empiricism and is sometimes called the father of philosophical skepticism. [Not such an unalloyed boon - Ed.] And by creating the field of economics, Smith helped humanity to think about policies that enhance prosperity. Those policies, including free trade and economic freedom that Smith advocated, have since helped to raise living standards to heights that would be unimaginable to Smith and his contemporaries.

That brings us to the last but by no means least secret ingredient of progress. Freedom. Centres of progress during their creative peak tend to be relatively free and open for their era. That makes sense because simply having a large population is not going to lead to progress if that population lacks the freedom to experiment, to debate new propositions, and to work together for their mutual benefit. Perhaps the biggest reason why cities produce so much progress is that city dwellers have often enjoyed more freedom than their rural counterparts. Medieval serfs fleeing feudal lands to gain freedom in cities inspired the German saying “stadtluft macht frei” (city air makes you free).

That adage referred to laws granting serfs liberty after a year and a day of urban residency. But the phrase arguably has a wider application. Cities have often served as havens of freedom for innovators and anyone stifled by the stricter norms and more limited choices common in smaller communities. Edinburgh was notable for its atmosphere of intellectual freedom, allowing thinkers to debate a wide diversity of controversial ideas in its many reading societies and pubs.

Of course, cities are not always free. Authoritarian states sometimes see laxer enforcement of their draconian laws in remote areas, and Smith himself viewed rural life as in some ways less encumbered by constraining rules and regulations than city life. But as philosophy professor Kyle Swan previously noted for Adam Smith Works:

Without denying the charms and attractions Smith highlights in country living, let’s not forget what’s on offer in our cities: a significantly broader range of choices! Diverse restaurants and untold many other services and recreations, groups of people who like the same peculiar things that you like, and those with similar backgrounds and interests and activities to pursue with them — cities are (positive) freedom enhancing.

The same secret ingredients of progress—people, peace, and freedom—that helped Edinburgh to flourish during Smith’s day can be observed again and again throughout history in the places that became key centres of innovation. Consider Paris.

AS THE CAPITAL OF FRANCE, Paris attracted a large population and became an important economic and cultural hub. But it was an unusual spirit of freedom that allowed the city to make its greatest contributions to human progress. Much like the reading societies and pubs of Smith’s Edinburgh, the salons and coffeehouses of 18th‐​century Paris provided a place for intellectual discourse where the philosophes birthed the so‐​called Age of Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was a movement that promoted the values of reason, evidence‐​based knowledge, free inquiry, individual liberty, humanism, limited government, and the separation of church and state. In Parisian salons, nobles and other wealthy financiers intermingled with artists, writers, and philosophers seeking financial patronage and opportunities to discuss and disseminate their work. The gatherings gave controversial philosophers, who would have been denied the intellectual freedom to explore their ideas elsewhere, the liberty to develop their thoughts.

Influential Parisian and Paris‐ based thinkers of the period included the Baron de Montesquieu, who advocated the then‐​groundbreaking idea of the separation of government powers and the writer Denis Diderot, the creator of the first general‐​purpose encyclopaedia, as well the Genevan expat Jean‐​Jacques Rousseau. While sometimes [rightly - Ed.] considered a counter‐​Enlightenment figure because of his skepticism of modern commercial society and romanticised view of primitive existence, Rousseau also helped to spread skepticism toward monarchy and the idea that kings had a “divine right” to rule over others.

The salons were famous for sophisticated conversations and intense debates; however, it was letter‐​writing that gave the philosophes’ ideas a wide reach. A community of intellectuals that spanned much of the Western world—known as the Republic of Letters—increasingly engaged in the exchanges of ideas that began in Parisian salons. Thus, the Enlightenment movement based in Paris helped spur similar radical experiments in thought elsewhere, including the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh. Smith’s many exchanges of ideas with the people of Paris, including during his 1766 visit to the city when he dined with Diderot and other luminaries, proved pivotal to his own intellectual development.

And then there was Voltaire, sometimes called the single most influential figure of the Enlightenment. Although Parisian by birth, Voltaire spent relatively little time in Paris because of frequent exiles occasioned by the ire of French authorities. Voltaire’s time hiding out in London, for example, enabled him to translate the works of the political philosopher and “father of liberalism” John Locke, as well as the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton. While Voltaire’s critiques of existing institutions and norms pushed the boundaries of acceptable discourse beyond even what would be tolerated in Paris, his Parisian upbringing and education likely helped to cultivate the devotion to freethinking that would come to define his life.

By allowing for an unusual degree of intellectual liberty and providing a home base for the Enlightenment and the far‐​ranging Republic of Letters, Paris helped spread new ideas that would ultimately give rise to new forms of government—including modern liberal democracy.

Surveying the cities, such as Edinburgh and Paris, that built the modern world reveals that when people live in peace and freedom, their potential to bring about positive change increases. Examining the places where major advances happened is one way to learn about the conditions that foster societal flourishing, human achievement, and prosperity. I hope that you will consider joining me on a journey through the book’s pages to some of history’s greatest centres of progress, and that doing so sparks many intelligent discussions, debates, and inquiries in the Smithian tradition about the causes of progress and wealth.

* * * *

Chelsea Follett is the managing editor of HumanProgress.org, a policy analyst in the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and author of the book Centers of Progress: 40 Cities That Changed the World (2023).
Find her on Twitter at @Chellivia.
Her article previously appeared at Adam Smith Works, and the Cato at Liberty blog.

"The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties"

The French Revolution caused a fundamental schism among Americans whom a decade before fomented their own Revolution: throwing off British rule with the help of the French Crown, who had now been toppled.

Without that help, the American Revolution would have been stillborn. "The French had no no doubt acted in their own self-interest in supporting the United States during the American Revolution," points out intellectual historian C. Bradley Thompson, 

not to mention their centuries-old hatred of Great Britain, but it is likewise true that the Americans almost certainly could not have won their war with Great Britain without the aid of France. In other words, the Americans’ debt of obligation to France was real.

But that royal regime who'd helped had now been swept away by the Parisian mob, and America's Founding Fathers were unsure whether to support the mob's revolutionary cause. Whether the obligation still applied. These were honourable men in a time in which honour mattered, and they wanted to keep their promises. There was one specific point that made answering the question crucial. And that was the question of treaties.

These honourable men began to debate the nature of treaties, and what moral obligations they imposed.

That's what makes their debate — a debate most publicly between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — so relevant to us today in New Zealand.

The specific issue that came to divide America [says Thompson*] concerned its two 1778 treaties with France [particularly once Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain]. During some of the darkest days of the Americans’ war for independence against Great Britain, the infant nation signed a “Treaty of Alliance” and a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” with France that were important factors in its eventual victory. Sentimentally, morally, and legally, the Americans owed a debt to France. ...
    The two immediate political questions under discussion in 1793 related to the treaties were: 1) were the Gallo-American treaties of 1778 still in effect in 1793, and 2) if they were still actionable, how or in what way did they apply to the current situation?
    What was most remarkable about the ensuing debate in America was that it quickly and automatically turned from a political-diplomatic debate into a moral-political-diplomatic debate about the moral nature and obligations of treaties. Specifically, the fundamental issue was reduced to this question: is the United States morally obliged to fulfill its treaty obligations with France?

That was the question America's first president, George Washington, asked Hamilton and Jefferson to answer. From that question "arose one of the most interesting and complex debates in American political history."

To answer this question, we must step back and ask a series of related or corollary questions. What is a treaty? Are treaties between nations contracts (we’ve already defined what a contract is in “Contracts and the Birth of a Free Society”), and, if so, what kind of contracts are they? If treaties are contracts, must they have identical constituent parts as do other contracts (e.g., property or commercial contracts), or are they a special kind of contract with different conditions and requirements? Who arbitrates treaties when they’re broken? And what were the precise terms of the two treaties signed by France and the United States in 1778 (see above)?
    To understand what a treaty is, we must define its essential characteristics and applications. Samuel Johnson’s 1773 'Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as a “Negotiation; act of treating” and as “A compact of accommodation relating to public affairs.” Noah Webster’s 1828 'American Dictionary of the English Language' defined a treaty as “An agreement, league or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns, formally signed by commissioners properly authorised, and solemnly ratified by the several sovereigns or the supreme power of each state. Treaties are of various kinds, such as treaties for regulating commercial intercourse, treaties of alliance, offensive and defensive, treaties for hiring troops, treaties of peace, etc.”

These definitions encapsulate how treaties were understood in this age.

    By Webster’s definition, we see that treaties are contracts between sovereign nations. Treaties, like contracts, involve an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do or not do certain actions. The promise to do or not do something is a binding moral obligation, and to default on what one has promised is a dereliction of moral responsibility that causes a harm to the other contracting party.
    One major difference between treaties and contracts (at least up until the twentieth century) is that treaties, at least in the context of the eighteenth century, could not be enforced by a neutral third party. There was no international court system in the eighteenth century to adjudicate the violation of treaties. Hence treaties involved honour as the enforcement mechanism, but honour is a weak thread in questions of war and peace.
    Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both viewed treaties as contracts, or at least a certain kind of contract. The main question for Hamilton and Jefferson came down to this: how could the United States remain neutral in the conflict between France and England and still fulfil its treaty obligations to France? More specifically, did the two Gallo-American treaties of 1778 require the United States to defend France’s West Indian possessions? ...

Both Jefferson and Hamilton supported American neutrality. Both Hamilton and Jefferson wanted the new United States to do the honourable thing, to discharge their agreed obligations. And both Jefferson and Hamilton understood that — beyond "the discussion of treaties, alliances, diplomacy, foreign affairs, war, and international law (i.e., the law of nations)" — what their debate was about was "a philosophic contest over the nature of moral obligation," and what those obligations amounted to in this context. In short:

What is America’s moral obligations to uphold it treaties with France? In other words, what is the debt owed by the United States to France?

At bottom, and most relevant to us in New Zealand in the here and now, the question is: what is the nature of a treaty, and what long-lasting obligations does it impose?

Hamilton viewed "contracts with special moral obligations, but he did think treaties between nations were a special kind of contract with their own unique qualities and characteristics and thus with their own unique moral obligations that were somewhat different from those of regular contracts." Jefferson largely agreed. Like Hamilton he 

1) believed that treaties are a species of contract with traits like and unlike contracts between individuals; 

2) viewed treaties as defined by, and grounded in, the sanctity of moral obligations; 

3) supported American neutrality; and 

4) thought that only dire necessity could justify suspending or even renouncing treaties.

By "dire necessity" was meant that only if inevitable destruction would be the outcome. Given the nature the French Revolution, whose violence was only grown and whose outcome was still uncertain, they both came to the conclusion (for differing reasons) that alliance with the revolutionary regime posed too many dangers at present to be prudent.

That said, Jefferson saw the treaties with France as being agreements with the French people, not with the king — "that treaties are made between nations, not between their governments. This meant that nations may change their government or even their form of government without impairing their treaty obligations."

By the moral law of nature, according to Jefferson, the obligations of one man to another in a state of nature are carried forward to the state of society where the aggregate obligations of one society to another mirror those between individuals in and out of society. [Jefferson] argued that treaties between nations carry the same moral obligations via the moral law of nature as do contracts between individuals. But he then admited that some contracts, either between individuals or nations, can be broken when 1) “performance . . . becomes impossible,” and 2) “performance becomes self-destructive to the party.” Non-performance in the former “is not immoral,” according to Jefferson, and the “law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligations” in the latter. ... nations can and should be judges in their own cause in international affairs

There was a "right to self-liberation" from a  treaty, said Jefferson, but it was limited to just three cases:

First, a nation that absolves itself from a treaty must face a “danger” that is “great, inevitable and imminent.” ...
    Second, the right of self-release was limited solely to those clauses in a treaty that would bring “great & inevitable danger on us” but not from the treaty as a whole. ...
    Finally, a nation’s right to self-liberation from a treaty or the relevant parts comes with a moral obligation “to make compensation where the nature of the case admits & does not dispense with it.” Jefferson does not explain what constitutes “compensation” or how or by whom it would be determined, but he does think that a non-fulfilling nation is morally bound to pay some kind of compensation for not fulfilling its treaty obligation.

Hamilton however saw the treaties as being with the banished Bourbon regime, and should be considered therefore "as 'temporarily and provisionally suspended,' particularly if such treaties proved to be “disadvantageous or dangerous.” That the French people had a right to change their government was unarguable; but that right imposed no "right to involve other nations," not even those "with whom it may have had connections, absolutely and unconditionally." 

In such cases, the contracting party had a moral right, according to Hamilton, to “renounce” such treaties as incompatible with and detrimental to their original purposes. In sum, Hamilton argued, “Contracts between nations as between individuals, must lose their force where the considerations fail.”

The two men came to similar conclusions as to what to do, but for different reasons. 

If Hamilton’s strategy were to anticipate future dangers by suspending the treaties or certain articles therein, then Jefferson’s strategy was to delay as much as possible how specific articles of the treaties were to be applied in the present. Here, then, is the core difference between Hamilton and Jefferson: the former wanted to temporarily suspend America’s obligations, whereas the latter wanted to temporarily postpone their obligations.

Importantly, however, neither wanted to repudiate their obligations altogether. They understood there was an agreement, and its terms must be honoured — once action was clear, and not at the cost of their own destruction. As Thompson sums up Hamilton's position: "a treaty is not a suicide pact."

What is most important about the Hamilton-Jefferson debate is not what it tells us about their views on international affairs, diplomacy, foreign policy, or even treaties, but what it tells us about the Founders’ views on the moral status of contracts in a free society. Contracts are the moral ligament that holds a free society together.

* * * * 

* All quotes hereafter from from Thompson's post 'American Schism: The Hamilton-Jefferson Debate on the Moral Obligations of Treaties'

"The success of our civilisation rests on the pillars of Enlightenment thought—not on belief in the supernatural or in any specific set of ancient myths"

"Many liberals are strangely eager to concede that liberal societies are morally and spiritually bankrupt without religion to give life meaning. ... liberalism [they say] has proven incapable of filling the 'hole in people’s souls.' ... Liberalism 'nurtures the gentle bourgeois virtues like kindness and decency,' but not the 'loftier virtues, like bravery, loyalty, piety and self-sacrificial love.' Although he considers himself a liberal, [the NY Times's David] Brooks thinks liberal societies are lonely, atomised, and even selfish.
    "Brooks joins a growing list of public intellectuals who maintain that the principles and institutions of liberalism—democracy, freedom of speech and conscience, individual rights, and the rule of law—aren’t sufficient for societies to flourish. They believe society needs an anchor that goes deeper than liberalism—what Brooks describes as 'faith, family, soil and flag.
    "There are different expressions of this belief. In an article for the 'Spectator,' journalist Ed West discusses a phenomenon he describes as 'New Theism'—an intellectual movement pushing back against the rising secularism in Western liberal societies. In a recent essay for 'Quillette,' the historian and author Adam Wakeling describes this phenomenon as 'political Christianity,' which he defines as the belief that 'Western civilisation has Christian foundations, and returning to those Christian roots can help protect Western values today.' Wakeling challenges both of these beliefs and argues that the 'success of our civilisation rests on the pillars of Enlightenment thought: constitutional government, secularism, science, the rule of law, and human rights—not on belief in the supernatural or in any specific set of ancient myths' ...
    "Liberalism has lasted for centuries because it is the only set of principles and practices that enables diverse societies to thrive. But liberalism is under threat today. From the emergence of an illiberal and zero-sum form of identity politics on the Left to the resurrection of blood-and-soil nationalism on the Right, the consensus on liberalism in many Western democracies is breaking down. ... Many liberals are strangely eager to concede that liberal societies are morally and spiritually bankrupt without religion or some other 'comprehensive doctrine' to give life meaning. ...
    "The idea that we’re responsible for making our own meaning can be daunting. While religious believers have established doctrines, traditions, and communities, millions of their fellow citizens must find their way to lives of purpose without this scaffolding. Those who call for a religious revival in the West never explain what this looks like in practice. Does it merely mean refilling pews? Or some version of integralism, in which the state and religion are fused? What about the millions of people who simply can’t believe? Thomas Jefferson opens the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom by observing that the 'opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.' There’s a large and growing population of people in liberal societies who have followed the evidence away from religious faith, and they don’t need a surrogate faith to replace it.
    "The citizens of liberal democracies are fortunate to live in societies that afford them the luxury to have crises of meaning. In many other societies, and at many points in history, people faced more immediate crises: a king or a dictator who would kill them for believing the wrong thing; rival clans that would regularly raid their villages and destroy their homes; life at the mercy of nature, disease, poverty, and starvation. Liberal ideas and institutions like the rule of law, property rights and contract enforcement, and freedom of expression and conscience deserve much of the credit for the health, prosperity, and autonomy we enjoy today. The one thing liberalism can’t provide, however, is a sense of meaning and purpose—that’s up to us, and the responsibility of making our own meaning is a small price to pay. For many, it isn’t a price at all."

~ Matt Johnson from his article 'Liberalism and the West’s ‘Crisis of Meaning’'

BOOK REVIEW: 'The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi' - PART FIVE: Getting Rights Right

There have been two few thorough reviews of Ned Fletcher's weighty 2022 tome 'The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi -- so I thought I'd do the job myself. It's been a journey for us both that's taken several days (still, what else do you do on these long summer days but read long-form blog posts?) but at least the journey will have proved rewarding, I hope.

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Errors & Omissions
• Part 3: Getting Slippery With It
• Part 4: Cultural Change Takes Time

But we are now approaching our end. In this penultimate part of my review,  I assess the book's approach to what one author has called "the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.”

That concept is rights. And if there's one word that features frequently in the English text of the Treaty it's rights. (It's there in every Article, and the Preamble.) Yet if there's one concept in Fletcher's book that is most poorly treated, it is rights. And since this book will end up as recommendations to government -- and as John Locke maintained, the reason for setting up governments is the protection of rights -- it seems vitally important to quickly correct this dangerous oversight ...

John Locke (1632-1704): Locke’s idea that the rights to life, liberty, and property are 

natural rights that precede the establishment of civil society influenced English law, 

Britain's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688, and modern liberalism more generally.

6. Rights: Collective v Individual 

ONE OF FLETCHER’S BIGGEST OVERSIGHTS is his handling of the concept of rights, most especially of property rights. The word appears in the Treaty’s English text in each of the Articles and the Preamble [1], more than twice as many times as the word “protection” (which, as mentioned above, only ever occurs in association with the word "rights") and much more than the word “guardianship” (which fails to appear at all).

So the concept needs a thorough examination, but Fletcher’s treatment is almost entirely legalistic – excellent as far as it goes, but this is not nearly far enough. ‘Rights in law’ is a different thing to ‘things that should be recognised as rights.’ Lawyers talk about the former; philosophers and Colonial Office Under-Secretaries the latter.

Fletcher talks almost solely about rights-in-law. He records debates on legal title, rights of occupancy, customary versus common law rights, territorial versus sovereignty rights, and different contemporary views on Māori property rights. All good as far as that goes. But he never once ventures to discuss the philosophical foundation of rights themselves, or in what manner contemporaries viewed this foundation (are they God-given, equal and eternal? are they simple legal fictions? or are they, as Jeremy Bentham claimed, “nonsense on stilts”?) Never mind discussing how Māori understood them at the time!

Why is that important? It's important because the purpose of government is the protection of what this word represents, and every one of the times that word is used in the text (and it's used four times), the writer means by it something very specific. Something that is their conception of what it means, based on their own understanding at that time.

It really does deserve a whole chapter. In this book, such a discussion merits barely a paragraph. [2] Again: Bad Ned.

He has chapters on the history and management of Empire – good ones, all – but the book would benefit immensely from a chapter on the history and changing understanding of individual rights, and the application and (mis)understanding of property rights. Because, if properly understood in their full philosophical and historical context, this would change the title and content of his final chapter: “The Meaning of the Treaty.”

Again, why does this matter so much? It matters because so much now depends upon it. So we need to know, all the way down to the root, what it was the framers meant – each of them – when they wrote that word on those pieces of paper. 

It matters most of all because if the Treaty is about “protection” of Māori, as Fletcher claims, then as the Preamble makes very plain that was to manifest as “Protect[ion of] their just Rights and Property.” Which seems vastly different to Fletcher’s conclusion that it must lead to inter-tribal self-government. So it does matters what this means philosophically. Government protection of a person’s “right to” or “rights in” something is vastly different to the government protection or guardianship of a person or group. One is the foundation of a liverty-loving land; the other begins to build a paternalistic Welfare State.

What matters then, in best understanding the Treaty’s undertakings, is how the Treaty’s framers themselves understood the nature of rights – and for that we need to appreciate how the understanding of rights had changed from their high point in the Enlightenment era. By 1840, in what I’ve called above a transitional era, they were (in a phrase) mostly taken for granted. As Ayn Rand explains,

“The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.” [3]

For a concept that is so vitally important, the full understanding of the nature of individual rights and their derivation has never too widespread, and rarely fully defended even in their heyday. (Their defence was assumed, but never fully made.) And in today’s polluted intellectual waters, any spotlight on rights at all is generally only to grant bogus or group rights while denying genuine individual rights. [4] (Even the expression “'individual rights' is a redundancy … [s]ince only an individual man can possess rights…. But the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms.” [5])

The concept of individual rights and their link to individual liberty developed slowly, reaching its apogee in the Enlightenment. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) “is often credited with ushering in the modern conception of rights,” [6] initiating “a new way of understanding the sphere of control belonging to individuals” [7] (defining and protecting what Robert Nozick later called an individual’s “moral space” in which one enjoys the freedom to act without let or hindrance; your own turangawaewae).

At root this idea of rights “protects one thing: [an individual’s] freedom of action” -- property rights being “necessary to protect freedom of action and the right to life” such that the right to property is “a logical outgrowth of the freedom to which individuals are entitled.” [8]

The concept’s high point was in John Locke’s widely influential Two Treatises and their application in 1689 and 1791 in the UK’s and US’s respective Bill[s] of Rights. In his writing, Locke famously demolished the age-old Divine Right of Kings, arguing that legitimate rule arises not from a hand from above, but from individuals’ right to life, liberty, and property -- and their consent to be governed in order to protect those rights. He went further, saying that rulers who either usurp or fail to protect these rights should be thrown out -- by force, if necessary.

This wasn’t just a blow to monarchy by divine appointment. It was also a blow to the idea of their being a natural aristocracy. As Thomas Jefferson framed it, with “all eyes … opened, or opening, to the rights of man, the general spread of the light of science [lays] open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favoured few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.” [9]

The concept of individual rights (and the consequent notion of the “consent of the governed”) created and underpinned constitutional government in the US, and the new constitutional monarchy of the British Empire, but it was truly neither palpable nor self-evident, and was never fully defended even at the time -- and never widely enough understood. So by the mid-nineteenth century, when the Treaty was being written, many were ready at best to pay the idea only lip service – discussing rights only in the legalistic sense, say --and property rights in the sense of those written about by John Locke were at best only assumed. And they were also increasingly under attack, no less so than from Bentham and his “nonsense-on-stilts” school.

So in essence, 1840 represents a transitional period – Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian notion of government creating “the greatest good for the greatest number” was already overturning Locke’s individualistic rights-based view even before it had acquired a full and certain philosophical defence. “Fairness” was taking over from “freedom.” [10]

Little wonder then that Stephen himself, an evangelical intellectual who “must be classed among [Bentham’s] utilitarians,” [11] overlooked in his drafted instructions to Hobson any reference to rights beyond a single “admission” of the Chiefs’ rights of sovereignty already acknowledged in the 1835 Declaration of Independence! [12] It was left to the slightly more down-to-earth Busby, as Fletcher adroitly recounts, to add these references in both the Preamble, and in a new second Article so that the Treaty might “achieve the desired object.”

The contrasting attitudes of Busby and Stephen on this point reveal much about how rights were (mis)understood by different folk in different parts of Empire at that time – and what that might mean for what the framers thought they were promising in the Treaty.

The Treaty talks of “rights,” “property rights,” and “rights and privileges,” but it uses the concept as it was only loosely understood in 1840. And by this time, in the mid-nineteenth century, both the concept of rights and property rights had much less definition – and were often understood, at best, only in the instrumental, legalistic sense that Fletcher often uses.

Busby nonetheless thought it vitally important to include these important commitments to protect Māori rights, even if his own understanding of what that meant was flawed.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY FLAWED? I mean that the rights clauses he inserted are confused between ‘collective rights’ (which are a contradiction in terms) and individual rights (which are of the utmost importance) -- a crucial distinction that his wording often blurs.

The confusion begins with Stephen’s instructions. The “admission of their rights” [emphasis mine] in which he instructs Hobson to take note are a collective right and, in Stephen’s formulation, are confused between a territorial and a sovereignty right. A poor enough start. (To put it plainly, it is a different thing to protect “New Zealanders’ rights” than it to protect “every New Zealander’s rights.” The latter will lead to the former, if is to mean anything, but promising only the former will lead only to the destruction of the latter.)

Busby continues the confusion, as we shall now see. If we again follow Fletcher’s re-creation, Busby’s clauses which were his contributions are as follows [emphases are mine]:

• Preamble: Her Majesty Victoria ... regarding with her Royal Favour the Native Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and anxious to Protect their just Rights and Property ...
• Second Article (Part One): Her Majesty ... confirms and guarantees to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals thereof the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their ... properties, which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession.
• Third Article: ... Her Majesty ... extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her Royal protection, and imparts to them all the rights and privileges of British subjects.

First of all, as said already, it’s clear that if “protection” is to mean anything at all, then what we’re talking here is a protection of rights (of the just Rights and Property of Chiefs, families and individuals). And not the protection of a welfare right but, even in this era in which the understanding of rights is in transition, but the protection of “just Rights and Property.” But unfortunately, these are offered only under the feudal shadow of Chiefly, Tribal or collective rights.

Of course, the Preamble talks only of Chiefs and Tribes and of protecting their just rights and property. The Second Article clarifies this somewhat, declaring (in the first part, which was Busby’s addition) that the protection and recognition extends as well to the property rights of native families and individuals. So, good for Busby.

Part Two of the Second Article however, which derives from the Stephens/Normanby instructions, confuses matters altogether. It says:

• Second Article (Part two): But the chiefs ... yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of preemption over such lands as the proprietors thereof maybe disposed to alienate ...

Who exactly are “the proprietors” of which lands? And how does it affect the property rights of native families and individuals? The Article itself doesn't make this clear, but it's the Chiefs who are the signatories here, just as the Barons were at Runnymede. So families and individuals have been guaranteed property rights in whatsoever they may rightly possess, but their right to alienate their property (one of the fundamental rights associated with property) is denied them by the their Chiefs yielding a right that is not theirs to yield -- a veto power confusing things for those individual and family proprietors, where their Chiefs “yield” to the Crown a preemption right over whatever they may rightfully possess and may wish to alienate. So some boots and spurs were to remain, it seems.

Note that twenty years later the very able William Martin (New Zealand’s first Chief Justice) observed that “This Tribal right is clearly a right of property, and it is expressly recognised and protected by the Treaty of Waitangi. That Treaty neither enlarged nor restricted the then existing rights of property. It simply left them as they were. At that time, the alleged right of an individual member of a Tribe to alienate a portion of the land of the Tribe was wholly unknown.” [13] [Emphasis mine.] Which is fine. At that time.

The understanding of one Treaty framer and one of New Zealand’s most far-seeing Chief Justices seems to be that, while the alleged property right of an individual member of a Tribe was at that time wholly unknown, if it were to carry out its Treaty promise then it was the job of government to clarify, recognise, and protect whatever those property rights might be. That this did take some time (or if it’s ever even fully happened) is to my mind a grave failing in government’s duty – a failing that did of course become a leading cause in the “Taranaki Question” about which William Martin was writing in his 
1860 pamphlet.

But even Martin was misled by this misbegotten notion of collectivised rights, arguing in that same pamphlet that “the Natives … retained what they understood full well, the ‘tino Rangatiratanga,’ the ‘full Chiefship’ in respect of all their lands. These rights of the Tribes collectively, and of the Chiefs have been since that time solemnly and repeatedly recognised” [14] – a statement of collective rights that is almost feudal.

Ayn Rand’s statement on so-called collective rights makes the confusion plain, I think: “The notion of 'collective rights' (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that 'rights' belong to some men, but not to others—that some men have the 'right' to dispose of others in any manner they please.” Yet this is what this confusion continues to deliver, and to protect.

In his Two Treatises of Government John Locke used the concept of individual rights to demolish any support for the mystical notion of the Divine Right of Kings. Relying on John Locke, Thomas Jefferson denied there being a class of people born with saddles on their back to be ridden by a favoured few. Yet here, 180 years later, a British Chief Justice is using a bastardised notion of collective rights to protect a Divine Right of Chieftains – to (apparently) continue disposing of their serfs, slaves, and their property – in any way they please.

It demonstrates how the new more collective interpretation of rights could poison even an enlightened promise to protect them.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REVIEW HERE [PDF], or READ ON BELOW ...

=> PART ONE, the Introduction to the series

=> PART TWO: Errors and Omissions

=> PART THREE: Getting Slippery With It

=> PART FOUR: Cultural Change Takes Time

=> PART FIVE: Getting Rights Right

=> CONCLUSION: Rangatiratanga as Liberty

NOTES:
[1] Five times altogether, if one counts as one of those Article Two’s property rights guarantee of “full, exclusive & undisturbed possession of their Lands &c.”

[2] I’m being kind. I didn’t find one.

[3] Ayn Rand, ‘A Nation’s Unity,’ The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol II, 2, p. 3

[4] A good test of a “bogus right” is if it demands something of someone more than just leaving them alone. A right to the pursuit of happiness, for example, is different to a right to happiness. One recognises the moral space to pursue that; the other demands it be provided. By whom? By someone. These later kinds of bogus rights are sometimes called “positive rights.” And just as bad money is said to drive out good money (Gresham’s Law) so too the multuplication of bogus rights tends to drive out genuine rights. 

[5] Ayn Rand, ‘Collectivized Rights,’ in The Virtue of Selfishness, New York, Signet, June 1963

[6] Tara Smith, Moral Rights & Political Freedoms, p.18 

[7][7] J.B. Schneewind, ed. Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant, Vol. I, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 89

[8] Tara Smith, Moral Rights & Political Freedoms, p.5, 189. On Locke, Richard Epstein writes: 

"The starting point in Locke and in common law is a state of nature: in that state of the world, people own their own persons, but they do not own the full array of natural resources. How then do we match up specific resources with specific persons?
    "The general rule for an individual, and to some extent for a group, was that ownership of a property or resource went to the individual or group who possessed it first. Often it is claimed that such a rule of first possession is highly individualistic, and effectively ushers in laissez-faire capitalism by creating strong sets of individual rights that are then subject to voluntary exchange. Although there is some truth in this assertion, that criticism underestimates the subtlety of the common law rule. For individuals can band together by kinship arrangements or through contracts, and agree that if one of them acquires title, the right is shared by the larger kin group or organisation rather than vested in that person alone. It is thus quite possible to marry the rule of first possession – normally thought of as individualistic – to a regime with collective ownership of property.All legal systems have elaborate rules that regulate joint tenancies or tenancies in common and reject the proposition that any one co-owner is allowed to exclude another co-owner from the use or possession of the property. 
    "However, any system of collective ownership gives rise to a second level of problems that confronts all societies, whether ancient or modern. Governance rules must be determined within any jointly held property. Who decides how the resources are to be used? What is a fair distribution of the ownership shares? And most importantly, who determines whether a property is to be alienated, either through a complete sale or through some limited partial transfer?" (Richard Epstein, 'The Treaty of Waitangi; A Plain Meaning Interpretation,' NZBR, 1999, p. 4, )

[9] Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/214.html

[10] See on this David Hackett Fischer’s comparison of the US and NZ founding in his Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, Oxford University Press, (2012)

If we take as our signposts of decline the great classical economists and their writing about private property, we note that "Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus, among others, understood its importance but took its existence as a given." They assumed it rather than defended it. And after that the descent was swift. "Of the[se] earlier economists, Malthus had delved into the subject a little more than others ... [penning] an essay for Encyclopaedia Britannica, which includes perhaps the best argument for property made by any economist of his day." But his arguments were not so much philosophical as rhetorical. 

Only "after the Napoleonic Wars [did] it begin to dawn on people in England that property really was no longer immune from criticism" and might need a decent defence -- but at the philosophical level, none ever came. "J.R. McCulloch's Principles of Political Economy, published in 1825, included 12 pages in its defence," but the defence was on a utilitarian rather a moral or philosophical basis: "The right of property, he wrote, was 'the foundation on which other institutions of society mainly rest.'" Which is true. But good as it was, his own argument was based on the results of property-protecting institutions rather their moral basis --on outcomes rather than philosophical foundations. 

In his history of property rights, Tom Bethell "tells the story of the profession’s subsequent long descent toward neglect of private property’s importance. So steep was the descent," he recounts, "that [by] the late nineteenth century, Alfred Marshall averred that people could be trained 'to feel the public interest as their own.' Likewise, Frank Taussig argued in 1911 that a 'higher moral sense' would soon make people more public-spirited." (Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph; Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, St Martin's Press, New York, 1999, pp. 107-8)

[11] (Knaplund, p. 15),

[12] Normanby to Hobson, 14 August, 1839 (as drafted by James Stephen): “I have already stated that we acknowledge New Zealand as a sovereign and independent state so far at least as is possible to make that acknowledgement in favour of a people composed of numerous dispersed and petty tribes, who possess few political relations to each other, and are incompetent to act or even deliberate in concert. But the admission of their rights, though inevitably qualified by this consideration, is binding on the faith of the British Crown. …” [Emphasis mine.]

 

[13] William Martin, The Taranaki Question (Melanesian Press, Auckland, 1860) p. 9 

[14] William Martin, The Taranaki Question (Melanesian Press, Auckland, 1860) p. 10