Chapter 13: An Unjust Government? Thankfully, Christians don't have to guess or wonder if they have the right to raise an armed insurrection against their government. That's because the New Testament plainly addresses this question: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due; customs (that is, tariffs and import duties) to whom customs; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor; owe no man anything except to love one another." Romans 13:1-8.
There it is in black and white: Christians do not have the right to resist or overthrow their government. That passage is so specific and clear that there's no room to wiggle around it. Few commandments in the New Testament are as explicit. So the only way the colonists could overthrow British rule was to break an express command given by God. And Christians who break God's laws show that they don't really trust God. They don't think God has their best interests in mind when He gives His law.
They don't trust that things will work out for the best if they follow His laws. A person would logically expect that Christian textbooks would point out that the American colonists were breaking God's laws by rebelling against the government. But they don't. Instead, they go to great lengths to portray the English government as so oppressive and unreasonable that surely God would excuse the colonists for breaking His law.
These textbooks typically begin with the mercantile theory as an example of English injustice. The mercantile theory. The Christian textbook, The History of Our United States, says this about the mercantile system: "The colonists were forced to accept the low prices that England offered them because they could not sell their products anywhere else. The colonists must sell their iron to England where it could be made into the things that colonists needed.
Then the English ships would take the iron products back to the colonies, where they would be sold for high prices. Who would get wealthy under such laws? Who would become poor? Since the colonists had no voice as to the price of their products, they were the ones to become poor. Such things would not happen to the people who lived in England. Where had the colonists' rights as Englishmen gone?
The king had little concern for the colonists in America except for the money he made from them." Other textbooks state that the English believed that the colonies existed only so the mother country could exploit them. Those are some rather heavy accusations levied against the English government. But what do the facts show? They show something very different from what the textbooks say. A more honest depiction is that England wanted mutual benefits to flow between England and her colonies.
Nevertheless, the mother country would always come first. It wasn't a matter of England versus her colonies, but the English Empire versus the Spanish, French, and Dutch empires. None of the European colonial powers wanted another country's colonies competing with their own colonies. They all firmly believed in trade protectionism. Trade protectionism is an economic policy that seeks to protect the industry and commerce of a given nation by imposing restraints on free trade with other nations.
Today, most nations practice trade protectionism to a lesser degree than did nations in the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet, even today, most countries have tariffs and trade regulations to protect their own industries. Were the colonists prohibited from manufacturing? Despite what was said in the aforementioned textbook, Parliament passed no blanket laws prohibiting the American colonies from manufacturing. The only prohibited items I've been able to uncover were steel and its related products.
And even these weren't prohibited until 1750 when Parliament enacted the Iron Act. That act made it illegal for the colonists to operate a steel furnace or any factories or forges for rolling iron or forging iron plates. Parliament passed the Iron Act to protect the British iron and steel manufacturing industry. However, to benefit the colonists, Parliament removed the import duties in Britain on pig and bar iron coming from the colonies.
This created a huge market in Britain for raw iron from the colonies, which is what the colonies mainly produced anyway. In addition to the Iron Act, Parliament prohibited the colonies from exporting two items. First, in 1699, England passed the Woolen Act, which made it illegal to export wool or woolen products from Ireland or any English colony. But this act primarily hurt the Irish, not the Americans. American wool was of too poor a quality at that time for export.
We should note that it was not illegal for the colonists to produce woolen products. They just had to sell them within the local colonies. In 1732, Parliament passed a law forbidding the export of beaver hats from any of its colonies. Again, the colonists could make and sell beaver hats within the local colonies. Two American university professors, Gary M.
Walton and Gary Rockoff, who have studied in detail the impact of Britain's laws on colonial manufacturing, make this observation: "The fact that these were the only prohibitive laws directed at colonial manufacturing indicates Britain's lack of fear of American competition.
After all, England enjoyed a distinct comparative advantage in manufacturing, and the colonies' comparative advantage in production lay overwhelmingly in agriculture and other resource-intensive products from the seas and forests." Note that the important shipbuilding industry in the colonies was not curtailed by British legislation. Indeed, it was supported by Parliament.
Therefore, any piecemeal actions to prevent colonial manufacturing activities appear to have been taken largely to protect particular vested interests in England, especially those with influence and effective lobbying practices. Does the U.S. government act any differently? From reading history books that paint British policies as unjust, a person would think that after the Revolution, the newly formed United States would follow an entirely different policy, a policy of free trade. However, that's not the case.
No sooner was the new United States government formed than it put into operation practically the same system Britain was using. For instance, during George Washington's administration, Congress placed heavy tariffs on manufactured goods imported from other countries. It did this to protect American manufacturers by making various foreign manufactured goods prohibitively expensive in the United States. In colonial times, the British government had protected only a few items, but the new U.S.
Congress protected nearly every industry. But, you may protest, this was different because it protected American manufacturing. Yes, but American manufacturing was centered in the northern states, so Congress was forcing the less populous southern states to buy expensive northern manufactured goods. Even in the northern states, Congress forced everyone to pay higher prices for manufactured items whether they had a job in manufacturing or not.
Moreover, American protectionism went beyond what Britain had ever imposed on the colonies. And the tariffs the federal government levied were much higher than what Britain had imposed. Over the objection of the southern states, Congress eventually raised the rates of protective tariffs so high that they averaged more than 50% of the price of imported items.
If it was right for the American colonies to revolt against England because of the economic policies imposed on the colonies, was it also right for the South to rebel against the United States government because of the economic policies it forced on the South? Once we decide we can break God's law because we think our government is unfair, where does it stop? What else do Christian textbooks bring up in their attempts to justify the colonists in their disobedience to God?