• 11 • AMERICANS, “TO COMPLETE OUR POLITICAL HAPPINESS… SHOULD VOLUNTARILY RISE UP”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF DANIEL SHUTE’S BOLD 1768 SERMON 11(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) SHUTE, Daniel, A.M. A Sermon Preached Before His Excellency Francis Bernard, Esq; Governor, His Honor Thomas Hutchinson Esq; Lieutenant-Governor, The Honourable His Majesty’s Council, and the Honourable House of Representatives, Of the Province of the Massachusets-Bay in New England, May 25th. 1768. Being the Aniversary for the Election of His Majesty’s Council for said Province. Boston: NewEngland, 1768. Small octavo, period-style full speckled calf gilt. $4000 First edition of Shute’s provocative Sermon delivered in the aftermath of the Stamp Act and other punitive British legislation, asserting the basis for “political resistance” against violation of Americans’ “natural and civil rights,” affirming historians’ view of colonial rebellion as fueled by clergy such as Reverend Shute, demonstrating “religion was a fundamental cause of the American Revolution.” Following Britain’s 1765 Stamp Act and 1766 Declaratory Act, seen as establishing “the same principle of political absolutism,” American clergy such as Congregationalist minister Daniel Shute “played an important role in shaping the public mind and provoking the response to the British that became the American Revolution” (Steward, Justifying Revolution, 52, 1). One of the era’s “strong proponents… [of] political resistance” (Steward, 69), Reverend Shute here affirms “life, liberty, and property, are the gifts of the creator,” yet also argues “the line… between one society, and another, is not drawn by heaven; nor is the particular form of civil government.” He states civil government “is not a refiguration of… natural privileges, but that method of securing them.” Shute’s principles and the persuasive eloquence of his Sermon demonstrate how “religion was a fundamental cause of the American Revolution” (Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, xx). Shute asserts that for the colonists—”every privation of their natural rights… is subversive of their happiness.” He significantly points to how Americans, who are made subject to the laws “by civil rulers… may be morally obliged to resist them.” Speaking against a doctrine of “passive obedience and non-resistence [sic],” he declares this “came not down from above, as it can be supported neither by reason nor revelation, and therefore… may be urged with a better grace by the rulers of darkness… than by those powers that are ordained of God for the good of mankind… The welfare of the province,” he asserts, “demands the attention of the guarantees of our natural and civil rights.” Key to this is Shute’s bold claim that Americans, in order “to complete our political happiness… [exert] ourselves to aid the civil power… and instead of leaving the magistrates unaided, should voluntarily rise up for them against the evil doers” . First edition, first printing: title page with uncorrected “MDCCXLVIII” for 1768. With errata (p. 70). Tiny inkstamps not affecting text (p. 7 and 55). Text fresh with light scattered foxing.
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