What Arbroath can Teach Us

The principle of popular sovereignty – the idea that the ultimate power in a country comes from and rests in the people and not kings or other powerful figures – was first asserted in the western legal tradition in the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 – signed in Scotland 706 years ago this month.

Most likely written by an Abbot and and signed by 81 noblemen before being sent to a Pope, it’s hardly the brainchild of proletarian rabble-rousers.

But it contains some gems. Chief among them this bit:

“Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.“

In other words, if the king betrayed the people by failing to fight for them, they would have had no choice but to overthrow him because Scotland’s sovereignty was not his to give up. It belonged to the people.

This principle of Scottish law also means that the later Union of Crowns and then Act of Union (in which Scotland’s Parliament was dissolved and the so-called United Kingdom was formed) were both illegal under Scots law because neither was done with the consent of the majority of Scottish people. The Clearances and all the other crimes against humanity perpetuated against Scotland’s people that followed were enabled by this colossal crime – the theft of an entire nation from its people. Scotland was, and remains, a colony.*

One of the key results of those crimes was the mass migration (nominally voluntary – and otherwise) of Scots to North America. Today, roughly 9 out of every 10 people in the world with Scottish ancestry live outside Scotland. Once in North America, they formed the tip of the spear for European colonization in the attempt to steal a new country for themselves. I’ve written more about that in The Clearances and the Commonweal.

For the Scots and Scots-Irish Americans who made up the majority of the Revolutionary army in the 13 colonies, Arbroath would have been at least as recognizable as the Magna Carta, and is a far clearer and earlier precedent for the American Declaration of Independence.

Two and a half centuries later in the country they founded, we find ourselves in a remarkably similar position.

Whatever pretenses our government may have once had towards democracy are long gone. Instead of kings, the billionaires have made the government a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. Your country has been stolen from you – and both corporate parties were in on the con.

As America descends further into kakistocracy, I think we would do well to remember these words: “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

Freedom is worth fighting for. And the correct response to any King, President, or politician that attempts to subvert our freedoms is to “drive him out as our enemy.” It’s not easy. It’s not pretty. But it’s necessary.

For those interested in learning more about this history, please don’t take my word for any of this. I recommend starting with:

• The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, by Thomas Slaughter
• Scotch-Irish: A Social History, by James Leyburn
• Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity, by Colin Calloway

*On the subject of Scotland being a colony, there are of course many British historians who will claim this is ridiculous. They are wrong. Definitions of the word colony are varied, but typically include a nation whose economy and political system are repurposed to benefit an external colonizing power. Cambridge University defines it as “a country or area controlled politically by a more powerful country…” By this definition Scotland is a colony, and has been one since the illegal Act of Union. The failed independence referendum in 2014, which was defeated by the votes of English people living in Scotland, does not change that fact.

And, of course, by that same definition California is also a colony and has been since we were annexed at gunpoint so the Americans could loot the gold fields here.