Say goodbye, George

On this date back in 1796 George Washington published his “Farewell Address”. It was not actually a speech but a written document, and addressed not to the political class narrowly conceived but to American generally; its full and somewhat characteristically florid 18th-century title was “The Address of General Washington To The People of The United States on his declining of the Presidency of the United States.”

Washington could easily have secured a third term as president; there were no term limits until the mid-20th century. But he feared the precedent of a dominant figure assuming something resembling power for life, as well as being heartily sick of partisan abuse. So instead he stepped aside, creating a precedent nobody felt worthy to discard until Franklin Delano Roosevelt (with the plausible excuse of a looming world war, but still…).

The Farewell Address is remarkable in becoming an instant and enduring classic, full of statesmanlike wisdom. He cautioned his countrymen against sectional divisions, a prescient warning (and yes, Washington was a slaveowner but unlike Jefferson and many others, he freed his slaves in his will). He warned against entangling alliances, praised free trade, urged good faith and justice to all nations and particularly highlighted the danger of having divisions on foreign policy intrude on domestic politics.

He also gave a famous warning against political parties, one that I feel was misguided. It’s not just that it proved ineffective in practice; so did his caution about sectional divisions. It’s that parties are a very effective way to filter options and present reasonably coherent choices to an electorate. They are also loud, abusive and stupid. But you can’t have everything.

He also stressed a point that was not popular with my professors and I suspect would be even less so today: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

You said it, George. And in the elevated tone and improving effect of his Address, he showed us what true statesmanship can be and, in the process, underlined the sorry state of public affairs today in which one cannot imagine a departing politician having anything of remotely similar calibre to say or having the grace to say it the way Washington did.

By the way, Washington had actually wanted to step down after one term, and initially drafted the Farewell Address with James Madison’s help in 1792. But he was so worried about growing animosity between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, his Treasury Secretary and Secretary of State respectively, that he went for a second term to try to keep things under control. And it was a very successful term though, as these things tend to be, also one marked by greater political rancor than the first.

His departure saw an eruption of partisan bitterness, the formation of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties, a series of foreign crises that became dangerously entwined with domestic politics, and a bitterly contested election in 1800.

One wonders what calming influence Washington might have exerted from retirement had doctors not bled him to death over a throat infection in 1799. But his Farewell Address did help keep passions within limits among men who had known and deeply respected him, perhaps more so as he took on the august status that death paradoxically confers by protecting a public figure from further polemical blunders or simply remarks resented for their entanglement with current controversies.

If it does not look that way reviewing, say, the insults exchanged in 1800, imagine how little it might have taken to turn crisis into catastrophe in those troubled years. And consider especially Alexander Hamilton’s personally painful choice in 1800.

The election was thrown into the House of Representatives because of an Electoral College tie between the Democratic-Republicans top choice, Thomas Jefferson, and his appalling running mate Aaron Burr (in those days there were not separate Presidential and Vice-Presidential votes, and while one elector was meant to vote for Jefferson but not Burr it got messed up). Hamilton vigorously urged his party to vote for his bitter personal rival Jefferson rather than the egregious Burr because he would rather have a president with wrong principles than a president with none. Without a strong sense of what George would have wanted, and the Farewell Address denunciation of how partisanship embitters men and clouds their minds ringing in his ears, might Hamilton have been content to sit back and watch his rivals tear themselves apart to his country’s loss?

If we cannot produce such a document today, we can at least still read this one.

It happened todayJohn Robson
Not the Turks again

Aaaaargh. Here they come again. It’s September 18, 1739 and the Ottoman Turks just annexed Serbia in the Treaty of Belgrade. It turns out the siege of Vienna wasn’t the end of their relentless advance.

They were able to grab Serbia, including Belgrade, because they’d just defeated a Russian-Austrian alliance in the creatively named Austro-Russian–Turkish War that started in 1735 because, guess what, the Ottoman vassals in the Crimea kept attacking Russia.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the situation was somewhat obscure. But the Russians were allied with the Cossack Hetmanate in what is now Ukraine (the Russians claim the Hetmanate actually ceded itself to Russia in 1654 but this is generally regarded as a lie). And the Crimean Tatars, who had converted to Islam in the 14th century, were a major source of slaves for the Ottomans and conducted essentially annual slaving raids into Ukraine and Russia, seizing perhaps 3 million people over four centuries. I wonder if they’re considering reparations. Or does nobody talk about that one?

Anyway, Russia carefully maneuvered itself into a favourable diplomatic situation including ending its war with the Persian Empire (don’t ask) and signing a treaty with them as well as backing Austria’s candidate for the throne of Poland which it would subsequently help carve up.

Unfortunately none of the belligerents were any good at war and between plagues and bad sanitation and an elevated level of military incompetence especially among the Austrians in this one, the Russians and Austrians managed to lose. (Evidently we have no idea what the Ottoman losses were as they didn’t care at all.)

Serbia, to be sure, lived in a tough neighbourhood. (See Partition of Poland and other such sad stories.) Eventually they sort of escaped the Ottoman Empire from 1788 to 1793, then got reabsorbed and then revolted and as the “Sick Man of Europe” gradually lost its grip on the Balkans they fought their way out over about 25 years punctuated by massacres and setbacks.

Still, I do have to ask, with all the whining about the Crusades and European imperialism and so forth, why there’s so little commentary on the Ottomans’ persisted incursions into Europe including to back a massive slave-trading venture.

It’s kind of important to the story.

It happened todayJohn Robson
If your vote matters to you...

John Ivison has a good piece in today's National Post about the Liberals' hollow "consultation process" on abolishing the voting system we've used since the common people were first admitted to Parliament, in favour of one that will make them almost impossible to beat. And if you're worried about this change and the undemocratic, arguably unconstitutional way it's likely to happen, and live in the Ottawa area, you might want to attend the MY VOTE MATTERS Ottawa event this evening at the Ukrainian Community Centre (1000 Byron) from 6:00 to 7:30 and share your concerns.

Constitution, Government, National Post, Politics, United KingdomJohn Robson
The Edict of Just Kidding

Henri III

Well, September 17 gives us an opportunity to celebrate the Edict of Poitiers. I hear surprisingly little cheering.

OK, OK. So it was this 1577 declaration by French king Henri III of toleration for Protestants. Are we happier now?

Possibly not. It came, some say, after the sixth phase of the French Wars of Religion, a brouhaha that went on for some 36 years between 1562 and 1598 and caused millions of deaths directly or through famine and disease. Others deny that these wars, or this war, can be divided neatly into stages because the violence treachery and death just kept erupting despite periodic flowery declarations of reconciliation. Certainly if you look at a timeline it’s depressing how the wars blend into one another, punctuated by this assassination and that massacre ending in the “War of the Three Henries”.

As for the Edict of Poitiers, well, it was issued by the last Valois king, fourth son and favourite of Catherine de Medici which gives you some idea what his word was worth. And in any case the Edict, which arose from the Treaty of Bergerac three days earlier between Henri and the Huguenot (French Protestant) princes so everybody hated one another anyway, only granted Protestants the right to practice their religion in the suburbs of a single town in each judicial district. Not exactly life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Still, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? And after the “War of the Three Henries” ended with two assassinations (the ultra-Catholic Henri de Guise and then Henri III) the last man standing, Henri of Navarre, becoming Henri IV (the first Bourbon) things apparently got better even if he did have to pretend to be Catholic to become king. It was under him that the Edict of Nantes in 1598 promised Protestants something much more like genuine tolerance and even the freedom to, say, have a job you actually wanted including in government.

Still, we’re back in anecdote territory here, because France was still an absolutist state. Henri IV eventually became a very popular monarch and was assassinated in 1610, after which you got the three eternal Louis (XIII, XIV and XV, holding the throne between them for 164 years) and, uh, revocation of the Edict of Nantes and destruction of Protestant churches, closing of their schools and intimidating quartering of unruly dragoons in the homes of Protestants unless they happened suddenly to, you know, discover the truth of Catholicism. (Louis XIV, who revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 through the Edict of Fontainebleu, boasted that of nearly a million Huguenots, less than 2,000 remained in France a year later; some of my own ancestors were among those who fled to England where their talent and energy was actually welcome.)

We are accustomed to the story of freedom being a story. It has better and worse chapters, heroes and villains. But there’s meant to be a story arc in which in the end liberty prevails, to the point that any claim that can be advanced as furthering the cause of freedom has a strong advantage in public debate in Canada today. But again, where despotism reigns, you don’t have a story so much as a series of bleakly amusing anecdotes about the folly and viciousness of mankind.

Sadly, the Edict of Poitiers is essentially in the latter category. Hence the silence.

It happened todayJohn Robson