I decided to spend the day with my son Stuart, who is attending Berklee College of Music, at the Boston Public Library. The Boston Public Library opened its doors in 1848 and was the first large library opened to the public in the United States, and the first to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use. With over 30 million different books and A/V materials, that is a great deal of trust put into the public.
When you walk through the giant doors of the library off of Copley Square you first walk into a smaller corridor. To the left is a bronze statue of a Puritan looking man. I have visited this library a few times before but never had I stopped to read the the name on the inscription of the bronze statue. This time as I walked in, I was stopped by a young middle-eastern man who had a small digital camera who wanted his picture taken standing next to the bronze statue. After a brief moment, the picture was taken and he was on his way. I walked over to the statue and read that it was that Sir Henry Vane (Harry Vane) (born 1613– beheaded in 1662), an English statesman, who was also briefly present in North America, serving as a one term Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I went upstairs to the great hall where all of the oak desks and green lamps are found and began to research Henry Vane. I learned he also helped create Roger Williams' Rhode Island Colony and Harvard College. But more importantly, he was a tremendous proponent of religious tolerance, and the inherent rights of man. After a prolific career as a statesman who spoke without hesitation regarding freedom, he was ultimately beheaded by Charles II for treason. The King didn't like his politics as it undermined his power.
Here are some of the words of Henry Vane:
"The power which is directive, and states and ascertains the morality of the rule of obedience, is in the hand of God; but the original, from whence all just power arises, which is magistratical and co-ercitive, is from the will or free gift of the people, who may either keep the power in themselves or give up their subjection and will in the hand of another." King and people were bound by "the fundamental constitution or compact", which if the king violated, the people might return to their original right and freedom.
Sean Gabb, a British libertarian, notes that Vane was in the vanguard on issues of religious freedom. Although he was "among a small and easily defeated minority", his successors 150 years later "were responsible for the clearest and most solid safeguards of civil and religious freedom ever adopted into a constitution."
James Kendall Hosmer, editing Winthrop's Journal in 1908, wrote of Vane that "...his heroic life and death, his services to Anglo-Saxon freedom, which make him a significant figure even to the present moment, may well be regarded as the most illustrious character who touches early New England history. While his personal contact with America was only for a brief space, his life became a strenuous upholding of American ideas: if government of, by, and for the people is the principle which English-speaking men feel especially bound to maintain, the life and death of Vane contributed powerfully to cause this idea to prevail."
The last several years have brought much change to the world. Technology has provided tools that can connect me instantaneously to someone thousands of miles away. Information is powerful. A power that even a King or a dictator cannot always fully control try as they may. Information creates a leveling effect.
I received an email from Dorit Cypis. A great woman who is the head of the Middle East Initiative for Mediators Beyond Borders to which I belong. At the very moment I was immersing myself in Henry Vane at the Boston Public Library she had sent me an email concerning Gene Sharp that she entitled "Dictatorship to Revolution--the text behind the current social uprisings." What was attached to Dorit's email was one of Gene Sharp's 90 page booklets entitled "From Dictatorship to Democracy--A Conceptual Framework for Liberation" I had recently heard of a Gene Sharp from and article written in the New York Times. It described him as being a shy, thoughtful, elderly man who was one of the primary information providers to the recent populist uprisings, not only in Egypt, but in other countries as well. He has been writing his thoughts for several decades. Amazingly, he is not a big user of the internet nor social media. But when thoughts are as powerful as his, they have a way of of finding and flowing into the river of change. His contribution, like that of Vane has too been a strenuous upholding of democratic ideas: that government of, by, and for the people is the principle which men feel especially bound to maintain. His life has contributed powerfully to cause this idea to prevail all over the world. He lives and writes in Boston.
After the recent events in Egypt that we all watched unfold on CNN one might expect that we could all just simply move onto the next world event as if a box had been checked and Egypt had completed its' revolutionary to do list task. Gene Sharp, in his writings is quick to warn that, "Nor should this analysis be interpreted to mean that when a specific dictatorship is ended, all other problems will also disappear. The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic, and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression. It is my hope that this brief examination of how a dictatorship can be disintegrated may be found useful wherever people live under domination and desire to be free."
So now comes the hard work and long efforts. Revolution is not an event but a process, a process that if done correctly continues on and on in the hearts and minds of those who see a better way. May Henry Vane and Gene Sharp welcome you to Boston and to the idea that all people are inherently free and that government exists of, by, and for the people.
