“LEX FUNDAMENTUM EST LIBERTATIS, QUA FRUIMUR. LEGUM OMNES SERVI SUMUS, UT LIBERI ESSE POSSIMUS. [Law is the foundation of the liberty which we enjoy. We are all servants of the laws, so that we can be free].”
CIC.
In 1790 and 1791, America’s founding father James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on law at the College of Philadelphia, where both citizens and high governing officials were present. One of only six men who attended both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention, James Wilson, was appointed by George Washington and served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1789 until his death in 1798. As a Scottish native who immigrated to America in his early-twenties, Wilson imported his knowledge of theology, philosophy, and law to the new world. Additionally, one of his chief concerns was that of the education of American citizens. In his Lectures on Law, Wilson argued that educating citizens on law was necessary to preserve the freedoms and virtues of the Republic, a role he believed mothers would largely fulfill..
At the beginning of his first lecture, Wilson remarked upon the distinct qualities that created America’s exceptionalism:
“Were I called upon for my reasons why I deem so highly of the American character, I would assign them in a very few words—that character has been eminently distinguished by the love of liberty, and the love of law.”
The citizens of the Republic loved not only the freedoms they enjoyed but also loved the laws that governed them. While other nations were “gilded with the gay decorations of fable and mythology,” America enjoyed a grand narrative of “freedom and truth.” America was not built upon a phantom ideal or abstract ideology, but rather upon the love of order on the part of its people.
Wilson explained that while Americans esteemed the heroes of its founding and aspired to be like them, they must also take care not to neglect the virtues — namely the love of law and the love of liberty — which defined those heroes. He said,
“Neither of them can exist, without the other. Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.”
The citizens of America could not hope to imitate men like William Penn or Benjamin Franklin without a love for both liberty and law, and to preserve this love, Wilson presented his lectures.
Wilson believed that in order for citizens to love law, they must first have a knowledge of it, for one cannot love what one does not know. “Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge,” Wilson said. If citizens know the laws that govern them, they will also know their duties to perform and their rights to keep. For if duties and rights are directly proportional, then “few are able to trace or to estimate the great danger, in a free government, when the rights of the people are unexercised, and the still greater danger, when the rights of the people are ill exercised.” In understanding one’s rights and duties under law, one can cultivate his love for law itself.
All Americans have the capacity to understand law. Wilson wholly believed this premise and frequently criticized how complicated and intricate the study of law had become. He reasoned that while the complexities of legal theory are difficult for the average citizen to grasp, the basic principles of law, nevertheless, are comprehensible:
“It has been said of religion, that though the elephant may swim, yet the lamb may wade in it. Concerning law, the same observation can be made.”
The foundational principles of law, like the foundational principles of the Christian faith, can be understood by the common man. For in order to interpret the law, each citizen must know the original meaning of the law and the original intent behind the law. Therefore, each citizen of the Republic is to be, in a sense, a type of lawyer.
To become a nation of lawyers, the teaching of law must be a necessary component of republican education:
“The foundation, at least, of a separate, an unbiased, and an independent law education should be laid in the United States.”
Wilson sought to lay this foundation. He believed that as he had assisted in the formation of the United States, he must likewise assist in the formation of its education. “I can be equally successful—I will not be less zealous—in contributing the best of my endeavours towards forming a system of education likewise, in the United States,” he said. Outlined in his lectures over two years, this system of education is as necessary to the government’s stability as the structure of the Republic itself.
Wilson proceeded to explain the primary means by which education would be promulgated: mothers. Many women sat in the audience of his lectures, probably including women like Abigail Adams and Martha Washington. “Methinks I hear one of the female part of my audience exclaim,” Wilson interjected, “—What is all this to us? We have heard much of societies, of states, of governments, of laws, and of a law education. Is everything made for your sex?” By no means.
Wilson explained that the female role was distinct, but by no means inferior to that of man. To counter the false presumption that women had no political role in society, Wilson enforced the necessity of women’s critical role in education for a flourishing political life.
In the days of early America, it was accepted that women were the moral shapers of society. Men make laws, but women make mores (the habits and customs of a nation). Additionally, legislated laws cannot be obeyed without the habits and manners necessary to carry them out. “What are laws without manners?” Wilson asked, “How can manners be formed, but by a proper education?” One of the primary ways in which women make habits is through educating. In teaching their sons and daughters the manners and customs of the society, mothers endow their children with the science of law.
Education is of particular significance to women simply because of the influence they have as mothers. Wilson told the women,
“That plan of education, which will produce, or promote, or preserve such a system, is, consequently, an object to you particularly important.”
This significance is not because women were the sole educators of young people in the early years of America. Rather, mothers had a special, direct influence and nurturing role on the life of their own children. Referring to education, Wilson advocated that “You [mothers] must, my amiable hearers, give it your powerful assistance.” While mothers often single-handedly educated their daughters, mothers did not often have the sole responsibility of teaching their sons. Nevertheless, Wilson argued that mothers were not to overlook shaping the souls of their sons:
“[Your sons’] virtues in a certain proportion – the refinement of their virtues, in a much greater proportion, must be moulded by your example.”
For these reasons, women were not to overlook the weighty role of educating their children.
One of the most notable of the founding father’s wives, Abigail Adams expressed a similar sentiment when writing to her husband John Adams in 1776, nearly fifteen years prior to Wilson’s lectures. Abigail remarked upon the poor education of America: “It never I believe was in a worse state, at least for many years.” She hoped for a dawning of progress in the realm of education, “that our new constitution may be distinguished for learning and virtue.” Like Wilson, Abigail Adams recognized that mothers were the primary educators. Therefore, women must be well furnished with the tools and knowledge necessary to teach their children:
“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
Women must be educated so that they can shape their children into self-governing, virtuous individuals. Wilson and Adams both agreed that education was of paramount concern for a republican government.
Delivered over two hundred years ago, James Wilson’s Lectures on Law serves as a reminder to instill a law education into the life of young citizens. If America is “a government of laws, and not of men,” then Americans should be lawyers. Everyone has the capacity to grasp the basic principles of governance. Likewise, Wilson’s lectures provide a valuable blueprint for mothers in instructing their children in the way of virtue. For if a republican government is inherently one of self-governing individuals, then it must follow that those individuals both know and love the laws that govern them.
As Cicero explained, law is the foundation of the freedom we enjoy. We are slaves to the law so that we may be free.
