DISQUS

Uh oh...looks like we might have a case of unattributed plagiarism.

Consider RadGeek:

he was rather more explicit and consistent about his belief that the “evils” he condemned were to be remedied by ethnic cleansing, not by emancipation, and, if that wasn’t available, the lesser-evil alternative in his view was for “well managed” slaves who were “docile, useful, and happy,” and a slave-lord “restrained by his property in the slave, and
susceptible of humanity.” Taylor is widely considered to have been an important step in the ideological transition from the older Jeffersonian “necessary evil” defenses of slavery to the later Calhounian “positive good” arguments.

The juxtaposition of these two excerpted phrases and its accompanying paraphrase is illustrative in its prior familiarity...

"In Taylor’s opinion ‘slaves are docile, useful and happy, if they are well managed’ and that ‘the individual is restrained by his property in
the slave, and susceptible of humanity’. The blandishments as well as the terrors of religion indissolubly bind together the happiness and misery of
both master and slave. In this he anticipated the later arguments that slavery was a positive good." -- RW Fenn and JD Ellis. (2007) "The History of Hayfield in Caroline County in the Commonwealth of Virginia." Copyright, Bardon Hall Publishers

Of course there is also the Wikipedia rendition of this same piece of copyrighted material, itself plagiarized with a couple of words rearranged to make it look original:

Taylor agreed with Jefferson that the institution was an evil, but argued that it was "incapable of removal, and only within reach of palliation," and took issue with Jefferson's repeated references to the specific cruelties of slavery, arguing that "slaves are docile, useful and happy, if they are well managed," and that "the individual is restrained by his property in the slave, and susceptible of humanity . . . . Religion assails him both with her blandishments and terrours. It indissolubly binds his, and his slaves happiness or misery together." His approach, defending the preservation of slavery as it was and claiming that proper management could benefit the slave as well as the master, anticipated the more emphatic defenses of slavery as a "positive good" by later writers such as John C. Calhoun, Edmund Ruffin, and George Fitzhugh.

It's a seditiously simplistic art really. Take somebody else's paragraph and excerpted phrases, re-arrange a couple words, substitute a couple harsher-sounding synonyms like "slave-lord" for the dispassionate neutrality of the plagiarized original, truncate a couple of unnecessary names here and there, then post it as your own work and credit yourself endlessly for providing important "context" to the argument of others.

The only problem is when you get caught.

As for your comments on John Taylor of Caroline, again, you are taking the passage out of its context and directly ignoring the many other things that Taylor said about slavery. I quoted several of these.

What a curious claim. For comparative purposes it is sufficient to note that I provided a lengthy multi-sentence excerpt of Taylor's writings on slavery with the belief that an intelligent non-zealot could reasonably ascertain their context from the simple fact that such context is implicit to the length and completeness of the quote itself.

By contrast, Mr. "RadGeek" claims to have supplied the "context" of additional quotations from Taylor yet not one of them amounts to anything more than a brief mid-sentence phrase, allegedly excerpted from Taylor and described within the sentences of others.

Even more curious is the apparent supply of RadGeek's quotations, revealed by a moment's activity on any simple search engine: more mid-sentence phrase excerpts of Taylor described in the words of others from two sources: a 1995 essay compendium by David Thomas Konig (http://books.google.com/books?id=6p9IOsu3xXIC) and that ever-reputable repository of trivialized idiocy for stupid people who wish to pretend they are smart: Wikipedia. If you desired to add substantive "context" to Taylor and discuss it through the lens of measured historical analysis, RadGeek, it would be welcome. But don't post a litany of second-hand cherrypicked mid-sentence phrases in its place while simultaneously accusing another of the same for posting something far more extensive and substantive.

If nothing else has emerged from this exchange it is the validation of my earlier point about the tendency of zealotry to render any further rational discussion impossible. I'm content to leave it at that, as all honest attempts to reign in displays of zealotry, be they the effort of myself or others, have only elicited responses that illustrate the severity of the impediment it imposes upon conversation.

Zealotry in defense of liberty and against slavery is no vice, moderation no virtue…

You've mistaken zealotry for extremism, Micha. Extremism is a conclusion that may be reached by rational means and qualifies itself only by distance between that conclusion and the status quo. Zealotry, by contrast, is no more than stubborn irrational advocacy. It is not reached by rational mechanisms and it qualifies itself not by relation to an existing condition but rather by the intensity with it is voiced.

It’s “slavery, was evil, period“, full stop, no qualification with times-were-different-back-then bullshit.

Except that would be an untruthful removal of necessary context from the discussion or, as I termed it previously, a conversation stopper.

Since we have characterized slavery in terms of good and evil, it necessarily follows that this determination is a moral one. Therefore the logic of morality applies. And what does that logic tell us? It tells us that a moral wrong is determined by the act itself, but the culpability of the individual for that wrong is determined by the circumstances of its occurrence.

To put it another way, this is why the act of "killing" (a wrong in the strictest sense) renders a wide range of accompanying levels of guilt - that from a justified use of deadly force to preserve one's own person to manslaughter to premeditated homicide.

To end at the period and exclude the "but" of slavery's circumstance thus necessarily deprives you of the logical means of extending culpability from an abstract moral wrong to the particulars of the individual actor. So if you want to cut out any qualifications and state your platitudes, that's fine by me and we'll leave it at that. Just don't pretend to apply it to those you condemn, to wit: Jefferson, as you have just deprived yourself of the means to rationally do so.

Taylor is widely considered to have been an important step in the ideological transition from the older Jeffersonian “necessary evil” defenses of slavery
to the later Calhounian “positive good” arguments.

If anything, that is a testament to widespread ignorance about both Taylor and Calhoun. For all the faults of his response to slavery, Taylor was unequivocal in his identification of its moral evil:

The fact is, that negro slavery is an evil which the United States must look in the face. To whine over it, is cowardly; to agravate it, criminal; ant to forbear to alleviate it, because it cannot be wholly cured, foolish…such a state of things is the most unfavourable imaginable to the happiness of both the master and the slave. It tends to diminish the humanity of one class and increase the malignity of the other, and in contemplating its utter destitution of good, our admiration is equally excited by the error of those who produce, and the folly of those who suffer it.

It's a hard road to follow to get from that to "slavery is a positive good."

Radgeek - You may recall what I stated previously about your apparent singular fixation on American slavery serving as an inhibition on your ability to even discuss, much less accurately contextualize, any historical topic that appears even remotely in its proximity. Thank you for ably demonstrating my point.

That you reduce a conceded evil and fault - even among its practitioners - to the "ghoulish essence" of American government prior to circa 1865 shows plainly that you cannot even discuss slavery itself in its historical context and condition without descending into polemical fanaticism.

Yes, slavery existed, and yes, slavery was evil. But it's always easy to sit here from your modern perch and condemn its long-dead practitioners in paragraph upon paragraph of haughty self-righteous Jacobin indignation.

Far more difficult is to consider the status of slavery in its own time and ask the question that all persons of moral character asked at the time: what can we do to get rid of this wretched institutional inheritance? If American history shows nothing else, it is that there was no easy answer to that question. It was a question that took a million butchered lives to imperfectly resolve!

Men like Garrison, Spooner, Smith - and yes - even Taylor and Jefferson each tried to answer it before that resolution. And for that alone they deserve credit. There answers - and they were a multitude ranging from a Somersett-style judicial ruling to emancipated colonization in Liberia - were indeed imperfect for no less obvious a reason than that they all failed. But such is the nature of a wicked and complex problem, and when you respond to any honest discussion of that problem in its context by spouting nothing more than outraged zealotry at its participants you only cheapen and trivialize its place in history.

The signs of such zealotry abound in your response. Seriously, who else but a zealot composes an jeremiad of overweened morality to state that he *agrees* with a point of condemnation of Alexander Hamilton, to say nothing of the conceited bloviations that flow from you in all points of disagreement. Who else but a zealot would flippantly deny making comparative qualifications to Hamilton's fault, only to revert to an entire paragraph of the same on the very next line?

It is literally as if the s-word, slavery, is mentioned and all rational discussion, including of slavery itself, ceases and succumbs to your fanatical exercises of the high-and-mighty. From there forward all is assessed through the rose-colored lens of slavery and your accompanying moral indignation (which, for inexplicable reasons, you seem to believe to be superior to the moral indignation that all other sane people rightfully feel toward slavery). Thus nothing else can be said of pre-1865 America, or Jefferson, or Taylor, or even Calhoun without that lens' awkward and constant imposition. It is a fundamental confusion of a particular for essence; a supplanting of the substance with its attributes.

Beyond that point it is not possible to have a conversation as any subsequent point becomes drowned in the fanatic's shrill banshee cries. When substance ceases to be and all is reduced to attribute nothing can be said which does not take on the same misapplied attribute.

Some days ago I deferred to Dr. Niskanen's assessment of this tendency in American political dialog:

“The doctrines of nullification and interposition have been criticized or dismissed by later political theorists, primarily because they were used to defend slavery and the continued denial of civil rights to blacks. Americans have an unfortunate habit, however, of evaluating a legal concept by the motivations of its advocates. Most contemporary Americans probably regard the Alien and Sedition laws, discriminatory tariffs, and slavery as repugnant.
The doctrine of nullification, however, should not be evaluated by the fact that it was first used to attack bad law and later used to defend other bad law, but rather whether it would, in general, promote law that reflects the broad consensus of the population.

The same may be said with equal relevance to Jefferson's concept of decentralized republicanism. And I'll leave it at that.

Bob - We get it. You condemn Jefferson for participating in slavery. But so does everybody else, so what's your point?

Is it that you consider Jefferson himself evil for participating in an evil, rather than merely flawed? If so, then I await your answer to my earlier question about the extension of an evil particular to the whole of a person. The fault in your attempt to make that connection is that it completely removes Jefferson from the context of his society (and while context never absolves guilt for clear wrong, it does mitigate its severity).

As to your hypothetical inheritance, I would answer that if you inherited them in a society that had existing laws beyond you control that would result in them being recaptured and forcefully enslaved by another, more cruel person than yourself if you so desired to free them, then yes. Keeping them would be a lesser evil upon them than the alternative. If, on the other hand, you could guarantee their protection from the coercive power of another upon attaining freedom, then that would be the more moral course. As you can see, context matters immensely in determining the scope of moral judgments.

Then again, I'm not exactly inclined to put much faith in the moral compass of somebody who believes the Barbary Pirates were an aggrieved victim of American commercial interests so I'm not sure discussing this further even matters.

Hamilton proposed only what he thought he could get away with at the convention, and even that was seen as to extreme. What he stated to be his "private opinion" was an outright embrace of European-style hereditary monarchy.

I'm no expert on Jefferson's correspondences, but I do know of his influence on the most prominent follower of his agrarian model, John Taylor of Caroline.

Taylor had this to say on the subject:

The fact is, that negro slavery is an evil which the United States must look in the face. To whine over it, is cowardly; to agravate it, criminal; ant to forbear to alleviate it, because it cannot be wholly cured, foolish...such a state of things is the most unfavourable imaginable to the happiness of both the master and the slave. It tends to diminish the humanity of one class and increase the malignity of the other, and in contemplating its utter destitution of good, our admiration is equally excited by the error of those who produce, and the folly of those who suffer it."

...not much for a celebratory embrace of plantation agrarianism!

As to Hamilton's advocacy of monarchy at the constitutional convention, Res ipsa loquitur:

In his private opinion he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinions of so many of the wise & good, that the British Govt. was the best in the world: and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America. He hoped Gentlemen of different opinions would bear with him in this, and begged them to recollect the change of opinion on this subject which had taken place and was still going on...

He appealed to the gentlemen from the N. England States whether experience had not there verified the remark. As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles. Was not this giving up the merits of the question; for can there be a good Govt. without a good Executive. The English model was the only good one on this subject. The Hereditary interest of the King was so interwoven with that of the Nation, and his personal emoluments so great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad--and at the same time was both sufficiently independent and sufficiently controuled, to answer the purpose of the institution at home."

Chris - Jeffersonian Agrarianism was predicated on the small yeoman farmers, not the large plantation systems of the east coast. This is immediately evident in Notes on Virginia where he stresses the association of virtue with individual small farm labor.

He called the agrarian trades morally superior to manufacturing based on the fact that manufacturing interests at his time were using the government to subsidize their own existence and tax their competitors abroad. Jefferson contended that this kind of industry led to political degradation in the legislature where favors were traded, or logrolled, between members. Insofar as that critique turned out to be completely founded for the next century and a half of tariff policy, Jefferson was correct.

My original comments were directed at Professor Levy's claim that Hamilton's record on slavery were a "lot" better than Jefferson and the subsequent minimization of Hamilton's general offensiveness to liberty in the comments that response provoked. The discussion of monarchy etc. then grew from that.

As the present order of debate can be traced by way of its respondents directly back to that original exchange, I believe it is fair to state that I have accurately described the current subject of discussion.

As to character, it is indeed shaped by particular actions. It is not synonymous though as the actions, being particulars, are not interchangeable with the whole that is character.

It is thus possible for a good person to commit a wrong, even grievously, and yet attain good character through his cognizance of that wrong, repentance for its ills, and strength as illustrated in other acts of goodness.

If you doubt that ask yourself this: is a child inherently marked with evil character if, by pure chance of his birth, he happens to inherit the plantation of his slave-owning father? I submit that he is not, and that his culpability in the sins of his father extends only to what he makes of his condition.

Jefferson had many failings with slavery in how he acted upon his condition - that has been roundly acknowledged by all. But he also advanced in goodness, even on slavery, far beyond most men of similar condition in his time, to say nothing of many good and substantive things he did in other matters.

I don’t understand this singular fixation on “comparative analysis” between slavery of the American system and that of European monarchies.

Then you've missed the point of the discussion up to this moment. The question was posited as to which system of government, or the given founders associated with its advocacy, is least offensive to liberty. The only practical means of answering that question is a comparison of their respective vices.

I asserted early on and still maintain that the statist faults of European monarchy, as advocated by Hamilton, far surpass those of Jefferson's decentralized republicanism even with slavery.

Of course, neither is ideal. But since some here have fixated upon Jefferson's faults with slavery as the basis for judging his entire character and system of thought. So comparative analysis becomes a contextual necessity to illustrate that, yes, with all its faults, Jeffersonianism still likens favorably to the many worse alternatives all around it. That is not an endorsement of Jeffersonianism's "perfection" or even a defense of its faults. But it is a statement of perspective that has otherwise been lost from this historical discussion because some seem not to grasp the difference between the evil of the particular act of slavery and the character of the sinner who commits it.

Micha - Once again, I do not "advocate" decentralized republicanism as an attainable ideal. In fact, there is very little of the state that I do advocate.

That said, it is possible to distinguish between the comparative flaws of different systems of government. And that is why I make the claim that decentralized republicanism is a lesser evil than monarchy or other autocracies. Such a claim is sustained by history and requires no advocacy of either system. So I'll again choke your comment up to either intellectual slothfulness or yet another irresponsible straw man.

As opposed to American chattel slavery in the 18th century, which was just peachy.

No Radgeek, as that would be a straw man. Nobody here to my knowledge has anything other than condemnation for slavery. What is being argued, though, is that the late 18th century system of Jeffersonian republicanism in the U.S. (though indeed marred by the imperfection of slavery) was better for liberty than its contemporary European monarchies (which were also marred by slavery, often at a worse degree, not to mention a whole lot of other things).

Your singular fixation on American slavery to the detriment of reasoned comparative analysis has thus far inhibited you from reaching this understanding not for want of information - the abuses of slavery under the European colonial system are well documented and far exceeded anything that existed here - but rather want of perspective. You seem to view the word "slavery" as a conversation stopper and little more, hence your statements such as the following:

You forgot to add an important qualifier. What you no doubt meant to say was “thedecentralized republicanism advocated for white people by Jefferson.”

Of course such a qualifier was hardly "forgotten" as I had acknowledged Jefferson's fault on slavery from the outset and readily contextualized that grievous fault aside his better characteristics long before you got here. But you already know that. So you return to the slavery canard not to inform the discussion, that discussion already being informed of it, but rather for its conversation-stopping shock value. Overlooking that for the moment though, I am somewhat mystified by the following statement for two reasons:

Hamilton’s views on the Executive, in their more flamboyant monarchistic versions, were contemptible and absurd; his views on the Executive, in their more practical pseudo-republican versions, were no less despicable, and much more damaging (because they were more insidious). But the hereditary absolutist tyranny of slavery, as actually practiced (not merely advocated in speeches) by Jefferson and his fellow white slavelords was no less terrible for being inflicted by means other than formal government.

First, by means of comparison between Hamilton's "views" and Jefferson's "practice" it appears that you intend to cast the latter as comparatively more offensive. Yet as we all know, Hamilton's "views" on the strong executive were much more than that. They were actually enacted into law in several instances and carried into effect through outright tyrannical means (the alien and sedition acts and the whiskey rebellion come to mind). Second, why the need to constantly qualify Hamilton's faults (which some here have attempted to dismiss with an air of flippancy and convenience unbefitting an intellectual discussion) with the already acknowledged and uncontested matter of Jefferson's fault on slavery? Why is it not sufficient to fault Hamilton as Hamilton for things he did in and of themselves?

Of course the answer is that critiques of Hamilton are indeed sufficient when standing on their own. Furthermore, should you desire to continue his juxtaposition along side Jefferson on the matter of slavery anyway, please take a moment to inform yourself of Hamilton's own sins in sustaining this insidious practice. Since you insist upon comparison, simply note that I find it hard to give a moral edge to the man who rents the slaves of others to do his chores over the man who owns them outright.

The propensity of democracies to descend into bureaucratic tyranny has extensive evidence at the time that William lives.

Indeed it does. But I am not an advocate of democracy. I find it to be a severely flawed system of government, and generally inferior to the decentralized republicanism advocated by Jefferson (which, though also flawed, is generally less intrusive upon liberty than either democracy or monarchy). Regardless, as I am not a proponent of democracy I cannot be said to be guilty of the following charge:

William knows that evidence as does everyone around him, yet William is willing to overlook it and advocate democracy anyway.

I'll accordingly choke it up to either intellectual slothfulness or yet another of Micha's irresponsible straw men.

Moving on to the asides...

1. Historical scholarship has long established that Madison was familiar with Hume's 1752 essay before the constitutional convention. Given that it influenced his actions there, it goes without saying that he is unlikely to have considered it a matter of dismissive satire.

2. Hamilton's monarchy speech was his longest and most notable contribution to the entire constitutional convention. Hamilton's known advocacy of strong executive power, the assessment of that speech by its critics is rendered credible by the detailed outlines that Madison provided (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documen...).

As to the comparison of Hamilton's particulars, it is notable that he made analogy between his system and the monarchial electoral processes of Rome and the Holy Roman Empire. He was not silent on the British system though, stating: "In his private opinion he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinions of so many of the wise & good, that the British Govt. was the best in the world: and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America." You obviously see no fault in that (though you did previously attempt a sleight of hand in which a very different 18th century British constitutional monarchy was intentionally confused with a 21st century figurehead in the style of Queen Elizabeth II). But again, that begs the question: why the American revolution?

3. I can agree entirely that the embargo acts were inconsistent with pure libertarianism. The point remains though that they were completely consistent with Jefferson's political economy from the earlier 1793 report - a point his detractors often fail to recognize. The issue here is accordingly a divergence between pure libertarianism and its Jeffersonian variant. In other words, if you said to Thomas Jefferson "That embargo thing isn't very libertarian" he would respond "I agree. It isn't, but I'm doing it for other reasons related to our national defense." That would be an unsatisfying answer to the pure libertarian I suppose, but it was exactly what Jefferson presented himself to be time and time again.

Professor Levy - If your sole standard of measurement is a perfectly libertarian state in the abstract form, then it is inherently an unmeetable one and thus not worth discussing beyond the abstract.

Back in the real world, any reasonable person can turn to the record of human history and find ample evidence attesting to monarchy's incompatibility with a libertarian-minded political arrangement. I also maintain that to be true in light of the "lesser measures" you offer.

Genocidal acts? History shows they tend to be accomplished by people who refer to themselves as King, Emperor, Commissar, Generalissimo, or Fuehrer.

Slavery? It was far more widespread in the colonial systems of the European monarchies than anything that ever existed in the United States.

Political prisoners? Again, this tends to be the favored domain of people who refer to themselves as King, Emperor, Commissar, Generalissimo, or Fuehrer.

Taxation? Well, that's pretty much the only one of your four measures where things get blurry. But then again, have you not been arguing all this time that it is improper to consider taxation analogous to slavery, which you seem to maintain to be the worst thing a state could ever do (it is not of course - death by the state is a worse infringement upon the liberty of the individual than slavery to the state).

All of that is not to say that republican systems of government are perfect in the first three regards. They are obviously not on many counts. But the simple record of history tends to show that the abuses associated with each category (save taxation, which is apparent in both) tend to be more pronounced among monarchies and their autocratic heirs.

I don’t see the difference between your definition and my definition of libertarianism’s primary concern.

You defined libertarianism's primary concern as being placed in the interaction of people in a political context, such interaction being unspecified in any further way. Such a definition could theoretically extend to any political philosophy as it is not qualified by the basic premise of the individual.

I defined it as being placed in the rights and liberty of the individual, with all interactions being an *extension* of the original principle of individual liberty.

That is the difference between our definitions.

That might be a good argument for Hamilton’s naivety about history, if not his libertarianism, if it didn’t happen to be the case that at the time Hamilton lived, the long-term stability of democracy did not have much evidence in its favor.

Indeed it did not, but at the same time the propensity of monarchies to descend into autocratic tyranny DID have extensive evidence at the time Hamilton lived. He knew that evidence as did everyone around him, yet Hamilton alone, at least among the more notable founders, was willing to overlook it and advocate monarchy anyway.

Libertarianism is primarily concerned with how people act towards each other in a political context, namely: when and how violent force can be justifiably used in society.

No Micha. Libertarianism's primary concern is the status and liberty of the *individual.* It is from that status that *all* other relationships stem, including the relationship between the individual and the state.

Recognizing that to be the case, the simple study of history strongly attests to the fact that some systems of state are inherently less conducive to the preservation and exercise of individual liberty than others. And monarchy just so happens to be one of those systems, hence my characterization of it (and its proponent Hamilton) as generally incompatible with libertarianism.

Micha - If you were attacking his political theory, you would be stating the problems that you perceive with nullification and concurrent majoritarian federalism. You would then offer arguments to support your rejection of said theories and refute any responses as appropriate.

Yet in reading your posts here, I see no attempt at any of that.

I see nothing even remotely resembling a refutation of the basic tenets his political theory. In fact, I see precious little that even attests to your familiarity with the basic tenets of his political theory.

In its place you only argue that Calhoun supported slavery, therefore his political theory must be wrong.

But that is not an argument. That is a non-sequitur.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. Rather it only attacks Calhoun, the person, ad hominem for supporting slavery. Thus your argument fails you on every logical assessment.

Well Micha, then it is evident that you have missed the points of Aranson and Niskanen entirely.

The validity of Calhoun's political theory is not altered by attacks on his person - even when those attacks are deserved for other reasons. That is called argumentum ad hominem. Look it up if you don't understand it, as appears to be the case.

He supported state-level slander cases against newspapers that criticized his party or administration– his free-press theory was kind of limited to the federal government and to no-prior-restraint.

That's a bit of an oversimplification of the issue, but granted it was so it was also entirely consistent with the original scope of the 1st Amendment per the application of the constitutional rule that was correctly stated in Barron v. Baltimore. As originally designed, the Bill of Rights' freedom of the press provision applied exclusively to the policies of the federal government. State policies were to be governed by the individual and varying stipulations of their respective constitutions. Though an imperfect application of libertarianism on Jefferson's part, his tolerance of state-level suits was not inconsistent.

The Embargo Acts were the most radical restriction of American trade in U.S. history.

They were also enacted as a genuine, if misguided, national defense policy amidst the turmoil of Europe's Napoleonic wars, and this too was done within the full purview of the Constitution. Nor was the Embargo Act inconsistent with Jefferson's advocacy of free trade, as he stated as early as his 1793 response to Hamilton's overtly protectionist Report on Manufactures that the use of trade restrictions for military purposes was a legitimate and constitutional exception to the rule that commerce should be free. Jefferson was misguided in this belief as he overestimated the strength of an embargo as a negotiating point abroad vis-a-vis its domestic harm, but his policy was not inconsistent with anything he espoused prior - in fact it was exactly what he espoused in 1793.

William, I think, seriously misunderstands the state of British government in 1787– not least because slavery on British soil was illegal.

Professor Levy's strawmen aside (as I made no such claim to slavery's 1787 legality in Great Britain proper), it is worth noting that slavery would continue to exist in the British colonial system until 1833 - some sixty years after the Somersett case.

As to monarchies, my point has similarly been sidestepped by the respondent. The particulars of the reigns of George and Catherine (who I simply offered as an example of a "benevolent" monarch, faults included) are simply an illustrative example of the greater point: strong monarchies tend to be so fundamentally incompatible with basic libertarian principles government that even the most "benign" (Catherine) or hapless (George) examples of them are replete with a heavy dose of autocracy.

I'm not sure what to make of the following, aside from the incredible ignorance it demonstrates:

The dominant view of the day was that republican governments could not survive in large states for very long and were likely to degenerate into Cromwellian or Caesarian military dictatorship

Far from being subject to a "dominant" small-state argument, the relationship described was very much an open debate among the late 18th century's political theorists. Furthermore the "large republic" side of that debate had some very prestigious names associated with it, not the least among them being Madison and, before him, David Hume (http://www.constitution.org/dh/perfcomw.htm).

it’s not as though Hamilton was longing to replace an obviously thriving and successful republic (he and many of the other Founders thought the U.S. was in crisis and that Shay’s Rebellion was the beginning of the end) with czarism.

Again Professor Levy misses the point. Hamilton needed not to espouse the reign of Ivan the Terrible to bring himself into active courtship with a fundamentally non-libertarian principle. The problem with monarchy takes no more essence in its worst examples than its best. The problem with monarchy is the centralized power structure of monarchy itself, which exists inherent to a monarchial system of government regardless of the individual attributes of the persons who happen to temporarily hold its office. Hamilton's enthusiastic courtship with monarchy is accordingly anti-libertarian in and of itself. Though it is indeed likely he never envisioned an American version of Ivan the Terrible (although his embrace of the Alien and Sedition Acts gives plenty of cause for wonder), neither is it even remotely likely that he envisioned his monarch as a 21st century figurehead with little to no policymaking power.

Hamilton's embrace of monarchy is entirely consistent with his subsequent advocacy of a strong executive and his constant work toward the centralization of federal power. Both were different means to a similar goal; neither were even remotely consistent with liberty.

It is also worth mentioning that the major monarchies of the world in 1787 - the time when Hamilton proposed a monarchy for the United States - all had some form of slavery in them. Many (France, Portugal, Spain) had far worse slave systems in their American and African colonies than the United States ever had as an otherwise free non-monarchy nation.

So I stand by my original point: Hamilton was in no way a friend of liberty, and all things considered he was still worse than the otherwise libertarian founders who failed in their practice of slavery.

and is living in a monarchy– like, say, the UK, or Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand– really inherently more unfree than living in a state with widespread chattel slavery?

Today in the year 2008, no. But in 18th when even the world's most "benevolent" monarchies - i.e. George III of England and Catherine the Great of Russia - left much to be desired (not to mention that embracing them as an example of a tolerable monarch would effectively negate the entire premise and act of the Declaration of Independence and subsequent revolution...not that you would want that to be so, would you?), and the far more typical monarchies could go toe to toe with your run-of-the-mill murderous autocratic 3rd world dictator of the mid 20th century, yeah. I'd say it's a lot more unfree on the whole than an otherwise free nation-state that enslaved a minority of its population as bad as that may be.

The history of monarchies in the world, to put it frankly, stinks. The bad ones are little more than little Hitlers and Stalins for their own time and country and the far more infrequent good ones are still far too autocratic. That Hamilton not only proposed such a system for the United States but openly praised it as the best system of government illustrates conclusively that he was no friend of liberty. When a tyrant is in power with unbridled autocratic authority all his subjects are slaves, central bank or no central bank.

But it’s too easy to take the Hamilton-Jefferson debate about the Bank (for example) and say “Hamilton anti-freedom, Jefferson pro-freedom,” and neglect the magnitude of slavery’s offense against freedom.

Assuming your eyes are keen you'll notice, Professor Levy, that I did no such thing though. Rather, I provided a whole litany of faults with Hamilton's policies and views which, taken in addition to his own personal shortcomings on slavery, illustrate him to be among the most statist and anti-libertarian members of the founding generation. And yes, included in that comparison are those who like Jefferson opposed slavery in the abstract though they fell far short in practice.