2010年12月20日 星期一

美国革命前传之茶党风云录

美国革命的前因后果真的像历史课本里所说的那样义正言辞吗?商人在美国革命中扮演了什么角色?茶党的组建到底是从善还是从恶?本文作者深入分析了美国革命爆发前发生的一系列由商人主导的暴动,让读者了解了美国革命的另外一面。

作者:Caleb Crain
DECEMBER 20, 2010
2010年12月20日
  What did the American Revolution look like? Nathaniel Hawthorne imagined it as an angry face, painted so as to appear divided in two. “One side of the face blazed of an intense red, while the other was black as midnight,” he wrote. This uncanny visage appears in Hawthorne’s tale “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” of 1831; its owner rides on horseback through moonlit Boston streets, carrying a drawn sword and leading a mob of people who laugh and shout as they wheel along a rich elderly man whom they have tarred and feathered.
  美国革命到底面貌如何?纳撒尼尔.霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthorne)把它想象成一张愤怒的脸,这张脸上黑红分明,就好像被一分为二一样。“这张脸的其中一面闪耀着激愤的红色,而另一面则如午夜般漆黑,”他这样写道。这一奇特面貌在霍桑1831年的小说《我的堂伯,莫利诺少校》(My Kinsman,Major Molineux)中就有所体现;故事的主人公在月色中骑马穿梭在波士顿的大街上,手中的剑已出鞘,后面还跟着一群吵嚷大笑着的乌合之众,他们用马车押着一个全身被涂上柏油并沾满羽毛的老富翁。
  Hawthorne’s “double-faced fellow” was modelled on a historical figure who went by the pseudonym Joyce Jr. and, in the seventeen-seventies, claimed to lead Boston’s Committee for Tarring and Feathering. In 1777, Abigail Adams recorded the charges against five merchants who were his victims: “It seems they have refused to take paper money, and offered their goods lower for silver than for paper.” During wartime, anxieties about hoarding and profiteering no doubt shortened tempers, and, in the BostonGazette, Joyce Jr. threatened “Judgment without Mercy” to anyone else guilty of “such nefarious Practices.” Joyce Jr. had little of the dignity that we associate with the Founding Fathers; his tone was bitter, and, more important, his grievance was mercenary rather than ideological.
  霍桑笔下的“双面人”是以一个化名为小乔伊斯的历史人物为原型的。这个人在18世纪70年代号称是波士顿“涂油沾羽”刑罚委员会的头面人物。1777年,艾比盖尔.亚当斯(Abigail Adams)记录下了针对五位受此刑罚迫害的商人的指控:“他们受迫害的原因似乎是他们做买卖的时候不收纸币,只收白银,而且用白银买他们的货物比用纸币更便宜。”在战争时期,对囤积居奇的恐慌无疑使人们对这种事情更感义愤,小乔伊斯在波士顿公报上发表声明,威胁任何其他使用这些“目无法纪行为”的商人,称“决不心慈手软”。小乔伊斯言辞狠毒,身上鲜有我们那些建国之父们的高风亮节;而且更重要的是,他的不满情绪是为利益所驱使,而非以理想主义为动力。
  His method of punishment, however, became iconic. Tarring and feathering was so popular in New England in the seventeen-sixties and seventies that at least one observer thought Americans had invented it, though in fact it has been around since at least the twelfth century. What was it like? Pine tar, used to waterproof ships, is liquid at room temperature and, in most cases, was probably applied unheated. Feathers were obtained either from fowl (the smellier the better) or from cushions. The third and most essential ingredient was exposure. One customs agent was kept outdoors in his “modern jacket” until he was frostbitten. “They say his flesh comes off his back in Steaks,” a woman reported afterward. Victims felt a lingering shame, though the frostbitten customs agent, a resilient personality, petitioned King George III to dub him a “Knight of the Tarr.”
  然而,小乔伊斯所热衷的“涂油沾羽”这种刑罚却渐受追捧。它在18世纪60年代和70年代的新英格兰进行得如火如荼,以至于不止一位评论家认为是美国人发明了这种刑罚,而事实上它最迟在12世纪就已经出现了。那它到底什么德性呢?柏油是那种涂在船身用于防水的松树柏油,在室温下呈液态。大多数情况下,涂在受罚者身上的柏油都是未加热的。羽毛则从家禽(越臭越好)身上或羽毛垫子里现拔。第三个同时也是最重要的必施计是风吹日晒雨淋。有一位海关职员曾被迫“穿”上这种“摩登夹克”一直在户外呆着,直到起了冻疮。“他们说他背上的肉冻得像一块块牛排似的”,一位妇女事后说道。所有的受罚者心头都有一种挥之不去的羞耻感。不过那位被冻得长冻疮的海关职员明显是个乐天派,他竟然请求乔治三世国王授予他“柏油骑士”的头衔。
  Few victims held the high social status of the elderly gentleman in Hawthorne’s tale, but he, too, seems to have had a historical model. Hawthorne was probably thinking of Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, whose Boston town house was destroyed, in 1765, by a mob upset by Parliament’s new stamp tax on the colonies’ newspapers, legal documents, and pamphlets. Hutchinson and his family fled their supper table just minutes before a crowd screaming “Liberty and property!” axed open the doors of their home. As Richard Archer notes, in “As If an Enemy’s Country” (Oxford; $24.95), a lively and sympathetic history of pre-Revolutionary Boston under British occupation, the rioters scattered or stole nearly everything inside, including jewelry, dishes, furniture, paintings, about nine hundred pounds in cash, and an archive of New England history that Hutchinson had spent thirty years collecting. “I see they threatened to pitch and feather you,” George III later observed, during a debriefing with Hutchinson, who by then had served as Massachusetts’s second-to-last royal governor. Hutchinson, a slender, fastidious man who liked to debate political philosophy, corrected him: “Tarr & feather, may it please your Majesty.”
  受罚者中很少是像霍桑小说里那位老绅士一样有较高的社会地位的,但他也似乎有其历史人物原型。霍桑所指可能是当时的马萨诸塞州副总督托马斯.哈钦森(Thomas Hutchinson)。当时是1765年,哈钦森在波士顿城内的居所被一群暴民所毁。这些民众之所以群情激愤,是因为英国国会决定对殖民地的报纸、法律文书和各种宣传册征收新的印花税。就在哈钦森一家匆匆从晚餐桌上逃离后几分钟,一干人等就高喊着“自由与财产”的口号用斧子劈开了他家的大门。就像理查德.亚契(Richard Archer)在《宛若敌国》(As If an Enemy\'s Country)一书中记载的那样,暴徒对屋内的一切物件或扔或抢,包括珠宝、碗碟、家具、油画、大约900磅的现金,还有哈钦森花了30年时间搜集整理的新英格兰历史档案。该书记录下了英国统治下的波士顿在美国大革命前的一段生动、令人恻隐的历史。“我听说他们威胁要往你身上涂沥青,然后再沾满羽毛,”乔治三世国王后来在听取哈钦森的工作汇报时这么求证。彼时,哈钦森已经是马萨诸塞州的第二任,同时也是最后一任皇家总督。他身形消瘦,爱吹毛求疵,喜欢跟人辩论政治哲学,他当时这样纠正乔治三世:“是涂柏油再沾羽毛,希望能取悦陛下。”
  “Insurgencies are not movements for the faint of heart,” T. H. Breen writes, in “American Insurgents, American Patriots” (Hill & Wang; $27), a scholarly, unnerving account of the American Revolution’s darker side—the violence, death threats, false rumors, and extremist rhetoric that introduced a new political order. Breen suggests that Americans today “have come to regard insurgency as a foreign and unpleasant phenomenon” and are now so imperial in outlook that we’d rather not remember that American revolutionaries, too, were irrational and cruel. The implied comparison with the contemporary insurgencies of Iraq and Afghanistan is interesting, but over the past two years the history of America’s first insurgency has taken on a new pertinence, as the Tea Party movement has laid claim to its anti-tax and pro-liberty principles—and has inadvertently reproduced its penchant for conspiracy theory, misinformation, demagoguery, and even threats of violence. Furthermore, in much the way that journalists have begun to ask whether shadowy corporate interests may be sponsoring today’s Tea Party, historians have long speculated that merchants may have instigated early unrest to protect smuggling profits from British regulators—that the start of the Revolution may have been Astroturfed. Archer’s history focusses on the years 1768 to 1770, and Breen’s on 1774-75; Benjamin L. Carp’s assiduously researched “Defiance of the Patriots” (Yale; $30) tackles the 1773 Tea Party itself. Breen is not concerned with the revolutionaries’ financial motives, and Carp sometimes takes the rebels’ rhetoric at face value. Nonetheless, the three books together offer a chance to ask new questions about the American Revolution, including one that the conventions of political sentimentality usually render unspeakable: Was the Tea Party even such a good idea the first time around?
  T.H.布林(T.H.Breen)在《美国起义军,美国爱国者》(American Insurgents,American Patriots)(Hill & Wang出版社;27美元)一书中写道,“起义并不是让人心生恐惧的运动,”这是一种对美国革命阴暗面学术性的,温和的阐释。这一阴暗面——泛指暴力、死亡威胁、散布不实传闻,和发表极端言论,自成一家,建立了一种新的政治秩序。布林认为,今天的美国人“把起义看成是发生在异域的一种不愉快现象”,而且他们认为美国现在拥有如此帝王气质,以至于最好别老记着当年的美国起义军也是缺少理性并且手段残忍的。这一将美国革命与目前伊拉克和阿富汗的暴力革命所作的隐晦对比很有意思,但这两年,对美国首次暴动史的研究已经有了新的针对性,因为茶党运动提出了反征税和要自由的口号,并且粗心大意地滥用它那些诸如阴谋论、以讹传讹、煽动群众、甚至暴力威胁的卑劣伎俩。而且,记者们已经在怀疑,那些见不得光的共同利益可能就是茶党组建的启动资金。历史学家们早已推测,早期的暴动可能是商人们为了在英国执法者眼皮底下确保走私利益而发起的。美国革命的开端可能就以此为铺垫。亚契的历史研究年份是从1768年到1770年,而布林是从1774年到1775年;本杰明.卡普(Benjamin L. Carp)则专攻1773年的茶党研究,著有《爱国者的反抗》(Defiance of the Patriots)(耶鲁大学出版社;30美元)。布林在研究中没有关注起义者们的金钱动机,而卡普有时也没有深挖他们的言论口号。然而,这三本书合在一起却给人一个对美国革命重新提问的契机,其中一问就是:茶党是不是在组建伊始就并非善意?这也是那些政治感伤派们一直缄口不语的问题。
  In pre-Revolutionary Boston, merchants and government officials were often at odds, because economics more or less required some merchants to break the law. Americans spent about a tenth of their income on manufactured goods from Britain, but Britain wanted little that New England was selling. To keep the cash flowing, Boston merchants therefore sold to planters in the French West Indies, who fed New England’s low-quality dried fish to their slaves and made barrels for their molasses from New England timber. Inconveniently, Britain taxed molasses from foreign countries a burdensome sixpence a gallon and, from 1756 to 1763, during a war with France, outlawed molasses from the French West Indies entirely. So merchants smuggled. For a bribe of between half a penny and one and a half pence per gallon, a typical British customs official was willing to shrink the reported amount of non-British molasses on board a ship by a factor of ten. The scale of the deception can be estimated by comparing customs records with insurance records: though smugglers lied to the government, they told the truth to their insurers. The historian John W. Tyler, in his book “Smugglers and Patriots” (1986), identified twenty-three Boston smugglers from insurance records and suggested that there were many more. He also discovered that these illicit traders were highly influential among political radicals.
  美国革命爆发前,波士顿的商人们经常跟政府发生冲突,因为要赚钱多少会打法律的擦边球。当时的美国人用1/10的收入来购买英国制成品,而英国人却绝少购买来自新英格兰的产品。所以,为了保证足够的现金流,波士顿的商人们就跟法属西印度群岛的种植园主们做生意,主要是卖给他们一些劣质鱼干(农场主们用这个填饱奴隶的肚子)和木材(用来做盛糖浆的木桶)。麻烦的是,英国政府对外国进口的糖浆课以每加仑六便士的重税,而且在1756年到1763年与法国开战期间,更是全面禁止从法属西印度群岛进口糖浆。商人们想到了走私。用半便士到一个半便士就可以贿赂一个普通的英国海关关员暗渡陈仓,对于船上的非英国产糖浆,他只会报实际数量的1/10。走私货物的数量其实可以从海关记录和保险记录的对比中一目了然:走私犯们虽然对政府不老实,但对保险公司却如实相告。历史学家约翰.泰勒(John W. Tyler)在他的《走私商和爱国者》(Smugglers and Patriots)(1986年)一书中就指出,他凭保险单记录指认出了至少23个波士顿走私商,而且他还发现这些走私商在政治激进派中有很大的影响力。
  It seems to have been bad feeling between merchants and magistrates that led to the sacking of Hutchinson’s town house. The seventeen-sixties saw the introduction of two new laws, the universally unpopular Stamp Act and, more damaging for merchants, the Sugar Act, which altered tariffs to discourage smuggling and altered the judicial system to make it easier to win convictions. To fight both measures, radicals like Samuel Adams hit on the idea that Parliament’s laws were invalid if they were “unconstitutional,” then a relatively new word. Adams argued that the traditional British balance of powers and liberties was violated if Parliament taxed Americans, who weren’t represented in it.
  波士顿的商人们和执法者之间似乎一直互有恶感,也正是这种交恶最终导致了哈钦森的宅邸遭到围攻。整个18世纪60年代见证了两部新法的登场,深受广大群众诟病的《印花税法案》(Stamp Act)就是其中之一,而另外一部《糖业法案》(Sugar Act)则更多地损害了商人们的利益。《糖业法案》旨在调整关税以打击走私,同时为了降低定罪难度进行司法改革。为了对付政府的这两大措施,像塞缪尔.亚当斯(Samuel Adams)之流的激进派们突发奇想,搬出了在当时来说相对新鲜的“违宪”一词,他们声称,如果议会通过的法案违宪,那它就没有法律效力。亚当斯争辩道,如果英国议会向美国人征税,那么英国传统上权力与自由的平衡就会被打破,因为议会里没有美国人的代表。
  In addition to rhetoric, a follow-the-money investigation indicates that Adams took coarser measures. As one of Boston’s tax collectors, he stayed popular by collecting very little, but on August 12, 1765, he uncharacteristically took out a warrant to seize back taxes from a shoemaker named Ebenezer Mackintosh, a rabble-rouser who led an annual parade at which effigies of Satan and the Pope were burned. Around the same time, a club of small businessmen known as the Loyal Nine, with whom both Adams and the city’s merchant élite were friendly, recruited Mackintosh to incite public disturbances against the new laws. On August 14th, Mackintosh’s rioters pulled down an office built by the colony’s appointed stamp distributor, beheaded an effigy of him, and broke into his house. The stamp distributor resigned twice—first by letter, and then, when another riot threatened, a few months later, in person, under an elm that became known as the Liberty Tree. “We do every thing in order to keep this and the first Affair Private,” a merchant in the Loyal Nine wrote to a friend after the second resignation, “and are not a little pleas’d to hear that Mackintosh has the Credit of the whole Affair.” Though Mackintosh never paid his delinquent taxes, Adams returned the warrant against him to the court unused. The Loyal Nine rewarded Mackintosh with a gilt uniform and a speaking trumpet, with money provided by John Hancock—one of the city’s richest merchants and a probable smuggler, and thought by one loyalist detractor to be “as closely attached to the hindermost Part of Mr.Adamsas the Rattles are affixed to the Tail of the Rattle Snake.” Mackintosh led the crowd that, two weeks later, destroyed Hutchinson’s home, though perhaps not at the bidding of Adams, who in a letter deprecated the “trulymobbishNature” of the attack. Mackintosh was briefly detained, but, after a gentlemen’s militia threatened not to defend the customhouse from future mobs, the sheriff let him go.
  除了耍嘴皮子功夫,一项“按钱索骥”的调查显示,亚当斯还有一些更粗暴的举措。作为波士顿的一名收税员,他只征收微薄税款,一直以来很招人待见。但在1765年8月12日,他一反常态地申请了一张令状,扣押了一个名叫艾比尼泽.麦金托什(Ebenezer Machintosh)的鞋匠的退缴税款。(麦金托什是个煽风点火的高手,他每年都会组织带领一帮暴民进行一场游行,焚烧撒旦和教皇的画像。)大概就在同时,一个颇得亚当斯和城里的商界精英们礼遇的叫“九死士”的小商人俱乐部雇佣了麦金托什来煽动公众对新法案的不满情绪。一天后(8月14日),麦金托什手下的暴民捣毁了一间殖民地印花税票指定发行人的办公室并将该发行人的画像斩首,后又闯入其住宅进行破坏活动。这位发行人后来两度辞职——第一次是递交辞职信,几个月后,随着另一场暴动暗潮汹涌,他又在“自由树”(是一颗榆树,当时其“自由树”的称呼已广为人知)下进行面辞。就在这第二次辞职之后,“九死士”的一位商人会员在给一位朋友的信中这样写道:“我们竭力不对外透露这两次暴动的始末细节,当我们听说麦金托什兜揽了整件事情的功劳时,我们简直要手舞足蹈了。”虽然麦金托什从未补缴其拖欠的税款,但亚当斯原封未动地把那张扣押退税的令状退还给了法庭。在约翰.汉考克(John Hancock)的资助下,“九死士”奖给麦金托什一件金光闪闪的制服和一个传声喇叭。汉考克是波士顿最富有的商人之一,可能也参与走私,用当时某位亲英派“大字报”人士的话说,他“紧紧粘在亚当斯的屁股后面,就像响尾蛇尾巴上长着的响板一样。”两个礼拜后,麦金托什又带领手下袭击了哈钦森的宅邸。不过,这次行动可能并非亚当斯的授意,他本人在一封信中还对此次袭击的“不折不扣的暴徒式行为”表示不认同。事后麦金托什被简单拘留,但是最后治安官不得不把他释放,因为有个绅士民兵团威胁说以后海关如果再被暴民袭击,他们将袖手旁观。
  In the spring of 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and revised its trade laws, replacing a threepence duty on foreign molasses with a one-penny duty on all molasses—about what a bribe had cost. Now that legally imported molasses was cheap, Boston’s smugglers turned to wine from Madeira and the Azores, which was heavily taxed, and to Dutch goods, which it was against British rules to import directly to the colonies. Although the colonists were still being taxed and still had no representation in Parliament, protest faded. “Were the people of Boston therefore hypocrites?” Archer asks. “There is no simple answer to that question.”
  英国议会在1766年春季废除《印花税法案》并修改了贸易法令,新贸易法将之前只对进口糖浆征收三便士税款这一条款改为对所有产地的糖浆都一视同仁地征收一便士的税款——当时走私商贿赂海关的钱也差不多是这个数。于是,走私糖浆不再有利可图,波士顿的倒爷们转而开始倒腾马迪拉和亚述尔的酒与荷兰货,因为前两个地方的酒被殖民地海关课以重税,而荷兰商品则被英国法律明令禁止直接销往其殖民地。虽然殖民地居民仍然向英国政府纳税,他们在议会也仍然没有代表席位,但抗议活动还是渐渐退潮了。“难道波士顿的民众都是伪君子吗?”亚契在书中问道。“这个问题的答案并不是简单的一两个字能概括的。”
  The stamp-tax riots set a pattern, and when, in 1767, Britain further strengthened the customs service and levied new taxes, Boston merchants—smugglers in the lead—again organized the resistance, this time through an agreement not to import British merchandise. The agreement, though ostensibly a matter of principle, was financially very convenient. Easy credit from Britain had glutted Boston with manufactured goods and had tripled the number of the city’s shopkeepers who moonlighted as importers. Non-importation gave more established merchants a chance to restrict supply, sell off inventory, and thin out the ranks of their rivals
  这几起与印花税相关的暴动为以后的抗议活动树立了一个标杆。英国在1767年进一步加强了海关监管并开征新税,为此以波士顿的走私者为首的商人们再次组织抗议活动,这回他们达成一致要抵制进口英国货。虽然这个协议表面上看来是个原则问题,但实际上商人们捡了大便宜。之前由于英国货赊购简便,波士顿市场上的英国制成品远远供大于求,城内的商店数目暴增了两倍,而且这些店主本身又兼做进口生意。一些实力相对雄厚的商人利用这次抵制进口的机会限制供货,盘活库存,排挤竞争对手。
  Legally, the merchants couldn’t enforce compliance, so they set about turning public opinion against those who resisted. The non-importers published the names of holdouts and called on Bostonians to boycott them. (Embarrassingly, a loyalist newspaper retaliated by printing the ship manifests of the non-importers, some of whom turned out to be importing after all; Hancock, for example, had brought five bales of fine linen into Boston four months after the agreement went into effect.) A series of street actions was also arranged. This time, the merchants’ populist intermediary was William Molineux, a smuggler, embezzler, and sometime hardware merchant who became known as “the first leader of dirty matters.” Windows were smashed, homes were smeared with feces and urine, and one holdout merchant was carted through town with a supply of tar and feathers until he requested permission to leave Boston forever. Customs agents were manhandled and hanged in effigy—those who seized a sloop of John Hancock’s were stoned—and in October, 1768, British troops moved into the city and occupied it for a year and a half.
  从法律上讲,这些抵制进口的商人不能强迫别人遵守这一协议,所以他们就设法调转民意来对付那些拒绝抵制的商人。他们公开那些商人的名单并鼓动波士顿民众抵制他们的商店。(尴尬的是,一家亲英派报纸报复性地刊登了抵制商人们的海运载货清单,他们中的一些人到头来还是进口英货了;汉考克就在协议生效四个月后进口了五捆上好的亚麻布。)此外他们还组织了一系列街头破坏行动。这回,商人们中人气最旺的中间人是威廉.莫利诺(William Molineux),此人搞走私,挪用公款,有时也做点五金生意,人称“罪恶勾当一号头目”。窗子被暴徒们砸得粉碎,屋子里到处被弄上大小便,有个拒绝抵制的商人浑身被涂上柏油,然后沾满羽毛,就这样被架在手推车上满大街游行,到最后他不得不请求永远离开波士顿。海关的工作人员也遭到粗暴对待,他们的画像被斩首——那几个扣押过一艘汉考克的帆船的工作人员被投石——到了1768年10月,英国军队进驻波士顿,并且扎营了一年半之久。
  All in all, the campaign worked so well that the merchants found it difficult to extricate themselves when Parliament, in April of 1770, repealed all the duties except one, on tea, which George III thought Parliament should retain so as to “keep up the right.” The tea tax had become a symbol, and it infuriated the populace. But the businessmen thought they could live with it; by 1770, supplies were beginning to run low and prices of most goods were pleasantly high. The merchants began to hold private meetings; one complained that it wasn’t fair for non-merchants to prevent merchants from dissolving an agreement made among themselves. In October, the merchants scrapped non-importation, and some non-merchants felt betrayed. “Great Patriots,” a Worcester man sneered to John Adams, Samuel Adams’s then less famous cousin, “were for Non Importation, while their old Rags lasted, and as soon as they were sold at Enormous Prices, they were for importing.”
  总之,这场抵制运动收效显著,以至于后来波士顿的商人们都不知道该如何脱身了。英国议会在1770年4月废除了几乎所有税目,只除了一项,那就是茶叶税,乔治三世国王之所以要议会保留这项税目是为了“延续权益”。于是茶叶税就成为了英国殖民统治的一个象征,殖民地居民对此极为义愤。但是,生意人们却举得茶叶税不是什么大事;因为一直到1770年,市场上各种商品都供不应求,物价也随之水涨船高,商人们自然不会在乎这么点茶叶税。他们开始组织非公开集会;有些人抱怨说生意人之间的协议不应该让那些非生意人来决定终止与否,否则就是不公平的。到了10月,抵制进口协议下的商人放弃了该协议,一些非生意人觉得自己遭到了背叛。有个伍斯特人这样嘲讽约翰.亚当斯(John Adams)(他是塞缪尔.亚当斯不那么出名的堂弟):“这些‘伟大的爱国者们’,当他们仓库里那些旧玩意儿卖不出去时,他们抵制进口,而一旦那些东西身价百倍销售一空时,他们就嚷嚷着要进口了。”
  For the next three years, Americans ostensibly boycotted the tea of the East India Company, Britain’s licensed monopoly provider, though in practice they drank what they liked. Indeed, for consumers, anger over the tea tax had never made much economic sense. For one thing, many drank Dutch-supplied tea, which was smuggled and therefore tax-free. Benjamin Woods Labaree, the most attentive scholar of the Colonial tea trade, estimates that three-quarters of the 1.2 million pounds of tea that Americans consumed each year was smuggled. Meanwhile, the tax on legal tea was largely offset by a tea-tax refund passed the same year. But in 1772 that tax refund shrank, making British tea more expensive and enhancing smugglers’ price advantage. Tea piled up in the British warehouses of the East India Company, which owed money to the British government and also needed to ask it for a loan. Someone had an idea: why not raise cash by dumping the company’s surplus tea on the American market? Parliament agreed to help by restoring the old refund in full and by allowing the company to export tea directly rather than through merchant middlemen. With the new measures, the price of legal tea was expected to halve. Consumers would save, Parliament needn’t lose quite so much on its bailout of the East India Company, and smugglers would be driven out of business.
  接下来的三年里,美国人虽然在表面上抵制英国东印度公司(英国政府批准的独家经营者)的茶叶,但实际上他们爱喝什么照喝不误。确实,对于消费者来说,对茶叶税的愤慨从来就没有什么经济上的意义。比如说,很多人喝的是荷兰茶叶,而荷兰茶叶是走私货,也就是说它没有上税。本杰明.W.拉巴瑞(Benjamin Woods Labaree)是殖民地茶叶贸易研究方面一位最敬业的学者,他估计当时美国人每年消耗的120万磅(约合544.8吨)茶叶中有3/4是走私货。与此同时,按同年的新规定,非走私茶的茶叶税有很大一部分都返还给茶叶经销商。但是到了1772年,这部分退税款有所缩水,导致官茶价格上涨,于是走私茶就有了更大的价格优势。东印度公司在英国的仓库里茶叶堆积成山,他们还差英国政府钱,而现在他们又需要向政府贷款来缓解危机。有人想到一个办法:把东印度公司库存的茶叶低价倾销到美国市场,以换取现金流。作为支持,议会同意全额补偿以前未发放的退税款,而且允许东印度公司绕过中间商直接出口茶叶。在这样的新策略下,官茶的价格就有望减半。于是,消费者就能省钱,议会在救市上也不必花费巨大,而生意场上将没有走私商的立足之地。
  Boston’s big businessmen felt threatened. Not only might smuggling cease to be profitable but, if the experiment of direct importation were to succeed, it might cut them out of the supply chains for other commodities as well. Clearly, it was time for Sam Adams and William Molineux to rile up the public again. At the start of November, 1773, a public letter summoned merchants expecting tea consignments from the East India Company to the Liberty Tree. When they failed to appear, Molineux led five hundred people to the store where the merchants were huddled, and its doors were torn from their hinges. A second letter warned the consignees not to take it for granted that the colonists would remain “irreconcilable to the idea of spilling human blood.” Amid the populist fervor, only a few noticed that the working-class Bostonian stood to gain little from the protest. Joke in a Boston newspaper, November 4, 1773: Colonist No. 1, hurrying to the Liberty Tree, says he hopes that a mob will force merchants to lower the price of tea, which has risen to a dollar a pound. Not exactly, Colonist No. 2 says. The mob is going “to make those who expect to sell at half that price send it back again.”
  波士顿的一些生意大腕们感到了威胁。如果成功实现直接进口东印度公司茶叶,那么他们担心的不仅是走私将无利可图,而且他们其他商品的供应链也可能会被切断。很显然,塞缪尔.亚当斯和威廉.莫利诺又该出山挑起民愤了。他们在1773年11月初写了一封公开信给那些等着东印度公司茶叶到货的商人,召集他们到“自由树”下集会。然而那些商人并未按信上所说的那样集结到“自由树”下,而是集体躲到了某家商店内,莫利诺得知后便率领500个喽啰直奔该地,破门而入。随后的第二封公开信警告这些东印度公司的客户们不要想当然地认为殖民地居民会仍然“觉得杀人见血这种想法不可原谅。”在这种所向披靡的热血激情中,只有为数不多的几个人注意到,波士顿的工人阶级在这场抵抗风波中其实所得甚少。城内的一家报纸在1773年11月4日刊登过这样一则笑话:殖民地居民张三匆匆赶往“自由树”,他说希望能有一个暴民强迫商人们降低茶叶价格(那时候茶叶已经涨到每千克2.2美元了)。而同样是殖民地居民,李四则说(不精确引用),暴民们声称“谁如果指望卖到半价,那就要他把茶叶运回英国去。”
  On November 28th, the first of three ships carrying East India Company tea arrived in Boston Harbor. If the tax on the tea was not paid within twenty days, customs had the right to seize it, and, because tea had grown scarce in Boston, it was sure to find its way into teapots once ashore. The next day, Boston’s radicals invited anyone with a stake in the city’s commerce to a meeting. Five thousand people showed up, and the group resolved that the tea should be sent back to Britain with the tax unpaid. The day after that, when Governor Hutchinson ordered the group to disperse, one of its leaders declared that they needn’t obey, because they had reverted to “a state of nature.” On December 16th, the last day of the first ship’s grace period, the group ordered the shipowner to trek to Governor Hutchinson’s country home, seven miles away, and ask, once and for all, for permission to leave the harbor with the tax unpaid. It was nearly six in the evening before the man returned with Hutchinson’s refusal. On hearing it, Sam Adams declared, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country,” and someone yelled, “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight!” By six-thirty, three teams of men, some in Indian disguise, were hoisting tea chests onto the decks of all three ships, hatcheting them open, and dumping the tea in the harbor. Between thirty and a hundred and fifty men took part, possibly, according to the historian Dirk Hoerder, under the supervision of Molineux, and in less than two hours they destroyed nine thousand six hundred and fifty-nine pounds’ worth of tea—some ninety thousand pounds by weight. The MassachusettsGazettenoted with approval that “such attention to private property was observed, that a small padlock belonging to the captain of one of the ships being broke, another was procured and sent to him.” Such an efficient and disciplined mob was unlikely to have been a spontaneous one. Indeed, Carp, who has identified a hundred participants, reports that eight of them were employed by a single radical merchant.
  东印度公司的第一批三艘运茶船于11月28日抵达波士顿港。如果到港后20天之内不上缴茶叶税,海关就有权利没收船上的茶叶,而当时茶叶在波士顿已经奇货可居,所以自然不愁销路。第二天,波士顿的激进分子们邀请任何一位跟本城商业沾边的人参加集会。总共有5000人到场,会议最后决定要把这些未缴税的茶叶运回英国。隔天,殖民地总督哈钦森命令集会人群解散,这时候集会的其中一位头头站出来宣布,他们不必服从这个命令,因为他们已经回归到“一种自然状态”。到了第一艘船缴税宽限期的最后一天,即12月16日,这伙人支使船主长途跋涉到哈钦森七英里之外的乡村宅邸去向其请示允许该船在未缴税的情况下离港,以期一劳永逸地解决问题。当天晚上快六点钟时,那位船主才回到波士顿并转达了哈钦森对这个请示的拒绝。塞缪尔.亚当斯听完后宣布,“这次集会已经无力拯救这个国家了,”接着就有人嚷道,“今天晚上波士顿港要变成了茶壶了!”到了六点半,他们就兵分三路(有些还乔装成印第安人)把三艘船上成箱成箱的茶叶抬到甲板上,然后用斧头劈开箱门,把里面的茶叶统统倾入海中。据史学家德克.赫尔德(Dirk Hoerder)估计,可能有30到150个人在莫利诺的指挥下参与了这一暴行,在不到两小时的时间内他们毁掉了重约41吨的茶叶——总价约合9659英镑。当时的《马萨诸塞公报》有一条对此事表示认可的报道,“他们很重视私有财产,有一把属于其中一位船长的挂锁被砸坏了,他们就另外弄了把锁给他送去。”如此高效和有组织的一场暴行不可能是自发的。确实,卡普已经确认了100个参与者的身份,他说其中有八个受雇于同一个激进派商人。
  George Washington disapproved of the Tea Party, and Benjamin Franklin called it “an Act of violent Injustice on our part.” But the Revolution was not yet in the hands of the Founders, although it had left those of the merchants, who now dodged and stalled as the people—passionate and heedless of economic niceties—called for a ban on all tea, even what was smuggled from the Dutch. The merchants were also losing their ability to control crowd violence. Breen reports that, in early 1774, a New Hampshire supporter of Parliament bled to death after a mob forced him to ride a sharp fence rail, which left a four-by-six-inch hole in his groin.
  乔治.华盛顿(George Washington)对茶党表示不认同,本杰明.富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)称这次暴行为“我方的暴力不公正行为。”但是建国之父们那时并未掌握革命的主动权。虽然那些商人们也已经失去了对革命的控制。他们现在只会躲躲闪闪,闪烁其辞,而狂热的群众却不顾经济上的利好强烈要求禁止买卖所有茶叶,甚至连荷兰的走私茶也不行。商人们也已经无力去操控群众的暴力行为了。布林在书中写道,1774年初,一位新汉普郡议会的支持者因被一个暴徒强迫骑上尖锐的篱笆围栏而在股腹沟上留下了一个10*15厘米见方的创口。
  Britain overreacted, closing the port of Boston, restricting town meetings in Massachusetts, and giving the King the power to appoint the upper house of the Massachusetts legislature. British troops arrived in Boston in May. A Salem newspaper called Britain “more cruel than Sea-Monsters towards their young ones,” and a meeting in Wrentham declared that Britain seemed to want to reduce colonists “to nothing short of the miserable and deplorable State of Conquered Slaves.” A few merchants still hoped that Boston might pay for the tea and reconcile with Britain, but they were too intimidated by the outbursts of popular anger to give voice to their proposal at a Boston town meeting.
  英国方面对这次倾茶事件的反应颇为过火,他们关闭了波士顿港,限制马萨诸塞各市镇的集会,而且议会还赋予国王钦点马萨诸塞立法会上议院议员的权力。英国的军队也于五月进驻波士顿。塞勒姆的一家报纸称英国人对待殖民地居民“比海兽对待他们的幼崽还要残忍,”在伦瑟姆所举行的一次集会上,与会者们也断言,英国似乎要把殖民地居民贬低为“除了可怜和可悲之外一无是处的奴隶。”然而仍然有一小部分商人寄希望于波士顿人会为这些茶叶买单并与英国人议和,但是他们被群众的熊熊怒火给吓坏了,不敢在一次波士顿的集会上把这个想法说出来。
  Sympathy for Massachusetts broke out in other colonies, and radicalized colonists across the region threw off the guidance of the merchant class. “These sheep, simple as they are, cannot be gulled as heretofore,” the wealthy New York City lawyer Gouverneur Morris wrote to a friend. “The mob begin to think and to reason.”
  对马萨诸塞的同情在其他几个殖民地蔓延开来,而且激进派的殖民地居民不再唯商人们马首是瞻。“这些头脑简单的羔羊不会再像以前那样轻易受人摆布了,暴民们开始用脑子了。””这是身家丰厚的纽约律师古弗尼尔.莫里斯(Gouverneur Morris)在写给一位朋友的信中说的话。
  In Philadelphia in September, 1774, as representatives from twelve colonies met for a Continental Congress, bells tolled throughout the city for Americans killed during a British assault on Boston. In fact, the British hadn’t assaulted Boston or killed anyone; the bells tolled for a false rumor. Nonetheless, tens of thousands—about a third of New England’s able-bodied men, according to one contemporary estimate—mustered to reclaim Boston. Breen observes that “no one seems to have expressed the slightest skepticism” about the truth of the rumors of British atrocity. A loyalist of the time put it more bitterly: “If the Faction had told their deluded Followers, that an Army of 30,000 Men were crossing the Atlantick in Egg Shells, with a Design to roast the Inhabitants alive & eat them afterwards, the People would have first stared, & swallowed down the Tale, whole.”
  来自12个殖民地的代表在1774年9月齐集费城召开了“大陆会议”,与此同时,钟声响彻整个费城,这是为英军袭击波士顿时丧生的美国人而鸣的丧钟。而实际上,英军根本就没有袭击波士顿,也没有杀害任何人;一切都是谣传。然而,还是有成千上万的人——根据现在的估计,大概新英格兰1/3的壮丁——聚集起来要收复波士顿。布林评论道,有关英军暴行传言的真实性,“似乎没有一个人表示过丝毫的怀疑。”一位当时的亲英派人士言辞尤为犀利:“如果带头的这帮人告诉他们盲目的追随者们,有一支30000人的部队正从egg shells横穿亚特兰大,企图把那里的居民活活烤死然后再吃了他们,那么这些跟班们肯定会先大眼瞪小眼,然后把整个故事照单全收。”
  Breen argues that the emotions roused by the false rumor emboldened the delegates, who soon passed the Continental Association, an agreement not to import or consume British goods. They voted not to let colonists export to Britain, either—though only after an interval that allowed Virginia to sell off its latest tobacco harvest. In addition, Americans were not to drink any taxed tea after March 1, 1775; sheep were to be preserved from slaughter, for the sake of a native wool industry; and no one was to indulge in cockfights, horse racing, theatre, or fancy dress at funerals. Soon the local committees charged with enforcing the Continental Association patrolled for thought crimes, too. They read private mail. They ordered loyalist pamphlets burned or tarred and feathered.
  布林认为,这一谣传所唤起的激动情绪给大陆会议的代表们壮了胆,很快,会议就通过了《大陆协定》。代表们还投票表决不准殖民地居民向英国出口货物——不过得先宽限一段时间让弗吉尼亚人把他们最近收获的烟草给卖完。会议还规定,从1775年3月1日开始,美国人不准再购买上税的茶叶;不准宰杀绵羊,要留着它们为本土羊毛工业做准备;所有人不准参与斗鸡、赛马,不准上戏院,葬礼上不准穿花色衣服。过不了多久,大陆会议的一些地方委员会就被指控强制推行《大陆协定》。随后,他们又对当地居民进行思想审查。他们私自阅读别人的信件,烧毁亲英派的宣传册或者对他们施以“涂油沾羽”的刑罚。
  Tea abstention and consumer sacrifice, Breen writes, “created a climate that encouraged other people to adopt more coercive ways to preserve liberty”—a phrase of Orwellian depths. Since the local committees lacked legal authority, their chief tools were intimidation and ostracism. As for violence, the committees forswore it “except so much as is necessary,” as a Worcester group nicely explained. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a committee went door to door for signatures to a new loyalty oath. According to its own minutes, the committee gave holdouts six days to reconsider before it published their names and ordered fellow-citizens to shun and boycott them—a stern but legal measure. In the journal of a visiting Englishwoman, however, Breen found another version. In downtown Wilmington one day, the woman saw a number of her American friends on the street: “I stopped to speak to them, but they with one voice begged me for heaven’s sake to get off the street, making me observe they were prisoners . . . and that in all human probability some scene would be acted very unfit for me to witness.” Probably, they expected a punishment like tarring and feathering, which would be more humiliating if a woman they knew was watching. Militiamen said the Englishwoman’s friends were free to go if they signed the loyalty oath. She waited in a house nearby while her friends held out, and sometime after two in the morning they were released.
  禁止买卖茶叶和消费者所作出的牺牲,布林写道,“开创了一种风气,这种风气鼓励另外一些人采取更野蛮的方式来保护自由”——一个具有奥威尔式深度的短语。地方委员会由于不具备法定权威,只能采取恫吓和排挤孤立的手段来达到他们的目的。至于暴力,他们发誓,“除非必要,否则坚决放弃,”这是一个来自伍斯特的团体所作出的小心翼翼的解释。在北卡罗来纳州的威尔明顿,一家委员会派人挨家挨户地上门征集对新效忠宣言的签名。他们给那些未签名的死磕派六天时间重新考虑,期限一过如果还不签名就要将他们的名字公诸于众,而且还要发动其他市民孤立他们——这招够狠但却不犯法。然而,布林在一位当时在威尔明顿观光的英国妇女的日记里却发现了这个事情的另外一个版本。这位妇女有一天在市中心碰到了几个她的美国朋友,她在日记中这样写道:“我停下来跟他们说话,但是他们却异口同声地请求我看在上帝的份上赶紧走开,弄得我以为他们是囚犯……在人类所有可能的行为中,有些场景真让我觉得不忍目睹。”她的那几位朋友可能知道自己那天要被施以“涂油沾羽”的刑罚,如果这一场景被他们熟识的女性朋友亲眼目睹,那他们会更觉不堪其辱。民兵团的人说这位英国妇女的那几位朋友只要在效忠宣言上签名就自由了。但他们始终没有让步。她一直在附近的一所房子里等消息,直到第二天凌晨两点过后,他们才被释放。
  Violence unlicensed by committee was wilder. In Plymouth County, Massachusetts, a drover who bought an ox from a royally appointed legislator was carted for miles inside the belly of its partially dressed carcass. In East Haddam, Connecticut, a loyalist doctor was tarred with hot pitch, feathered, and rubbed with pig dung. Deaths at the hands of American insurgents were rare, though. For their part, British troops did kill a few of Americans over the years, but even the so-called Boston Massacre, Archer shows, seems to have been a case not of malice but of soldiers panicking in the midst of a crowd throwing snowballs and sticks. Tempers were high, but it wasn’t yet clear to most people that the stakes were high, too. It had all happened so many times before: a British tax, an American fuss, British repeal, American calm. Until the Battles of Lexington and Concord, in April, 1775, neither side imagined that the other might not back down.
  未经过委员会允许的暴力行为才更野蛮。马萨诸塞州普利茅斯县的一位赶牲口的人从一位钦点的立法委员手上买了一头公牛,结果那帮暴徒就把他塞进那头公牛半开膛的肚子里,然后连人带牛被架上手推车走了数英里。在康涅狄格州的东哈达姆,一位亲英派的医生全身被泼上滚烫的沥青,然后沾满羽毛,最后又被抹上猪粪。不过,死在美国叛乱者手上的人为数不多。在他们看来,这些年英军确实杀害了一些美国人,但是根据亚契的研究资料显示,就算是所谓的“波士顿大屠杀”似乎也不是恶意的预谋,而是一群人扔过来的雪球和棍子让士兵们慌了手脚。大家的情绪都很激动,但是大多数人还不清楚的是,激动所要付出的代价也是很大的。这种事情已经老掉牙了:英国人要开征新税,美国人就开始闹事,接着英国人取消征税,美国人就太平了。在1775年4月的莱克星顿战役和康科德战役打响之前,英美双方都没有想到对方可能不会善罢甘休。
  Breen thinks that most Americans didn’t feel licensed to kill British soldiers until they learned of American deaths at Lexington and Concord, and began to read reprints of “The Crisis,” a series of vitriolic anonymous essays thought to be the work of a radical essayist named William Moore. “The Crisis” (not to be confused with Thomas Paine’s work of the same name) is spiteful and unhinged, and it’s dismaying that it spoke to the American spirit at the moment of independence. The author described the British Prime Minister, Lord North, as being “engendered in the womb of hell”; imagined George III eagerly plotting “the people’s ruin”; and claimed that the King’s friends in Parliament were planning “to plunder, butcher, starve, or enslave” first the colonists and then the British themselves. The author flirted with calling for the assassination of George III and wished death on both houses of Parliament. He could write as violently as he liked, he taunted, because under British law conspiracy to make war on the king didn’t qualify as treason unless accompanied by an overt act. As Breen notes, the author “did not worry a lot about evidence.”
  布林觉得大多数美国人对于杀英军士兵这事都会觉得太放肆了点,直到他们听说了莱克星顿和康科德战役中起义军的死亡人数,并且开始阅读《危机》这份刊物。《危机》主要匿名登载了一系列言语恶毒的评论文章,其作者据传是一个名叫威廉.摩尔(William Moore)的激进派评论家。请不要将此《危机》与托马斯.佩恩(Thomas Paine)的同名著作相提并论,它通篇充满恶意,逻辑混乱,更让人沮丧的是,作者把当时的英国首相诺斯勋爵(Lord North)描绘成“脱胎于地狱子宫”的怪物;乔治三世国王被他想象成迫不及待地密谋要“毁灭整个民族”;他还声称国王那些在议会里的同党们正在策划一场先对殖民地居民而后再对英国本土人下手的“抢掠,残杀,挨饿,或者奴役”的阴谋。他曾在文中鼓动要刺杀乔治三世并且一心想着议会上下两院都死光。他可以肆无忌惮地照他的好恶在笔下乱弹,因为阴谋对国王发动战争在英国法律下并不构成叛国罪,除非有公开的实际行动。就像布林说的,《危机》的作者并不怎么担心被抓到实证(因为他一直是纸上谈兵)。
  In 1974, the historian David Ammerman wrote that it is obvious in retrospect that America wasn’t going to play second fiddle in the British Empire indefinitely. “What is not so clear,” Ammerman continued, “is that the pursuit of equality need have included violence or that the equality sought necessitated independence.” Spend a little time with the venality, misinformation, hysteria, and violence that led up to the Revolution, and the picture becomes murkier. As Breen notes, “No evidence survives showing that the king or his ministers contemplated a complex plan to destroy American rights,” yet a significant proportion of the American populace became convinced that this was the case. The confusion might have been deliberately induced, if merchants were pulling strings. But then why did the puppets keep waving their hands even after the merchants tried to yank the strings in the opposite direction?
  历史学家戴维.安默曼(David Ammerman)在1974年写道,回溯历史,很显然美国不会一直身居大英帝国之下。“令人费解的是,”安默曼继续道,“是对于平等的追求需要暴力的参与,还是追求平等就必须要独立。”花点时间去了解一下贪赃枉法,散布谣言,歇斯底里,还有暴力这些美国革命的诱因,我们就会看到一幅混沌的画面。正如布林所说:“没有任何现存的证据证实当年国王或他的大臣们密谋要毁灭美国人,”然而有相当一部分美国人却相信确有其事。如果这事是商人们在操纵,那么他们是故意诱导迷惑群众。但为什么后来当商人们试图把事态平息甚至往反方向引导的时候,受他们操纵的那些“木偶”们却不回头呢?
  In the mid-twentieth century, historians trying to make sense of the paranoid style in American Revolutionary politics suggested that it derived from essayists on the fringe of the Whig Party in England who saw themselves as heirs of the men who had launched the English Civil War. Though marginal in England, these conspiracy theories seemed cogent in America, where colonists lived under governors with strong executive powers but no local constituency. Still, historically informed descriptions of what people believed don’t explain why colonists stood up for their principles only some of the time, and why they disagreed so acrimoniously that they were willing to dip one another in tar barrels. In a 1972 article, “An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution,” Marc Egnal and Joseph A. Ernst suggested that the Revolution may have been triggered by the growth of British capitalism, which for decades flooded the colonies with easy credit and with manufactured goods that were better and cheaper than Americans could make themselves. The British were doing to us in the seventeen-sixties more or less what China is doing to us today. Merchants were the first to make their discontent political, because they were the first to see that the economic predicament could be eased if the colonies had the autonomy to, say, print paper money or trade with other nations. The people, for their part, may have hoped that boycotts of imported luxuries would limit their personal spending and encourage American manufacturing, which might, in time, employ them. But the people’s enthusiasm for the boycotts far outran the merchants’. In banning such items as funeral scarves and elaborate mourning dress, the colonists seem to have been admitting to powerlessness, as if their desire for British goods were itself the instrument of their subjugation.
  二十世纪中叶,一些历史学家曾试着去分析美国革命中政治活动的偏执狂式风格,他们觉得这种风格可以追溯到英格兰辉格党外围的一些评论作者,他们把自己看成是当年发动英国内战那帮人的衣钵传人。虽然这些反动言论在英国不得人心,但在美国他们却切中要害,殖民地统治者们有着强大的决策权,但是当地居民却没有选举权。但是,历史普及常识中所说的人们相信的那些大道理还是解释不了为什么殖民地居民只是在某些时候才站出来保护他们的权益,也解释不了为什么他们尖刻地否认他们乐得把一个接一个的人浸到柏油桶里。在《美国革命的经济学解释》(An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution)(1972年)这篇文章中,作者马克.伊格诺(Marc Egnal)和约瑟夫.A.厄恩斯特(Joseph A. Ernst)认为是英国日益增长的资本主义引发了美国革命。英国货易赊购,而且比美国本土货更物美价廉,几十年间美国市场上到处是英国制成品。英国人在18世纪60年代对我们做的多少有点像现在中国货在我们这里攻城略地的情景。商人们是最早把他们的不满政治化的,因为他们最先知道,如果殖民地有自行印钞或者自由跟其他国家做生意的自主权,经济困境就能得到缓解。而广大群众也许希望对进口奢侈品的抵制会在限制他们个人支出的同时带动本土制造业,从而给他们提供就业机会。但是老百姓的抵制热情远远超过了商人们。在禁止诸如葬礼围巾和做工精良的丧服这些东西方面,殖民地居民似乎一直无能为力,好像对英国商品的渴望本身就是镇压这种渴望的工具。
  Maybe that’s where the paranoia and the rage came in. The British never forced John Hancock to ship fine linen to Boston, after all. He just suspected that Americans wanted it in spite of themselves, however loudly they said they preferred independence. Even today, Americans don’t want a revolution against their own consumerism—not for all the tea in China.♦
  或许那些疑惧和愤怒就是这么来的。毕竟,英国人从没有强迫约翰.汉考克进口那五捆亚麻布。他只是觉得美国人想要这种亚麻布。虽然他们大声疾呼要独立。就算在今天,美国人也不会让一场革命阻碍他们的消费热情——就算这场革命是为了中国所有的茶叶。

2010年12月10日 星期五

《零 八 宪 章》

20081210公布

     
   

    
一、前言

    
今年是中国立宪百年,《世界人权宣言》公布60周年,民主墙诞生30周年,中国政府签署《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》10周年。在经历了长期的人权灾难和艰难曲折的抗争历程之后,觉醒的中国公民日渐清楚地认识到,自由、平等、人权是人类共同的普世价值;民主、共和、宪政是现代政治的基本制度架构。抽离了这些普世价值和基本政制架构的现代化,是剥夺人的权利、腐蚀人性、摧毁人的尊严的灾难过程。21世纪的中国将走向何方,是继续这种威权统治下的现代化,还是认同普世价值、融入主流文明、建立民主政体?这是一个不容回避的抉择。

    19
世纪中期的历史巨变,暴露了中国传统专制制度的腐朽,揭开了中华大地上数千年未有之大变局的序幕。洋务运动追求器物层面的进良,甲午战败再次暴露了体制的过时;戊戌变法触及到制度层面的革新,终因顽固派的残酷镇压而归于失败;辛亥革命在表面上埋葬了延续2000多年的皇权制度,建立了亚洲第一个共和国。囿于当时内忧外患的特定历史条件,共和政体只是昙花一现,专制主义旋即卷土重来。器物模仿和制度更新的失败,推动国人深入到对文化病根的反思,遂有以科学与民主为旗帜的五四新文化运动,因内战频仍和外敌入侵,中国政治民主化历程被迫中断。抗日战争胜利后的中国再次开启了宪政历程,然而国共内战的结果使中国陷入了现代极权主义的深渊。1949年建立的新中国,名义上是人民共和国,实质上是党天下。执政党垄断了所有政治、经济和社会资源,制造了反右、大跃进、文革、六四、打压民间宗教活动与维权运动等一系列人权灾难,致使数千万人失去生命,国民和国家都付出了极为惨重的代价。

    
二十世纪后期的改革开放,使中国摆脱了毛泽东时代的普遍贫困和绝对极权,民间财富和民众生活水平有了大幅度提高,个人的经济自由和社会权利得到部分恢复,公民社会开始生长,民间对人权和政治自由的呼声日益高涨。执政者也在进行走向市场化和私有化的经济改革的同时,开始了从拒绝人权到逐渐承认人权的转变。中国政府于1997年、1998年分别签署了两个重要的国际人权公约,全国人大于2004年通过修宪把尊重和保障人权写进宪法,今年又承诺制订和推行《国家人权行动计划》。但是,这些政治进步迄今为止大多停留在纸面上;有法律而无法治,有宪法而无宪政,仍然是有目共睹的政治现实。执政集团继续坚持维系威权统治,排拒政治变革,由此导致官场腐败,法治难立,人权不彰,道德沦丧,社会两极分化,经济畸形发展,自然环境和人文环境遭到双重破坏,公民的自由、财产和追求幸福的权利得不到制度化的保障,各种社会矛盾不断积累,不满情绪持续高涨,特别是官民对立激化和群体事件激增,正在显示着灾难性的失控趋势,现行体制的落伍已经到了非改不可的地步。

    
二、我们的基本理念

    
当此决定中国未来命运的历史关头,有必要反思百年来的现代化历程,重申如下基本理念:

    
自由:自由是普世价值的核心之所在。言论、出版、信仰、集会、结社、迁徙、罢工和游行示威等权利都是自由的具体体现。自由不昌,则无现代文明可言。

    
人权:人权不是国家的赐予,而是每个人与生俱来就享有的权利。保障人权,既是政府的首要目标和公共权力合法性的基础,也是以人为本的内在要求。中国的历次政治灾难都与执政当局对人权的无视密切相关。人是国家的主体,国家服务于人民,政府为人民而存在。

    
平等:每一个个体的人,不论社会地位、职业、性别、经济状况、种族、肤色、宗教或政治信仰,其人格、尊严、自由都是平等的。必须落实法律面前人人平等的原则,落实公民的社会、经济、文化、政治权利平等的原则。

    
共和:共和就是大家共治,和平共生,就是分权制衡与利益平衡,就是多种利益成分、不同社会集团、多元文化与信仰追求的群体,在平等参与、公平竞争、共同议政的基础上,以和平的方式处理公共事务。

    
民主:最基本的涵义是主权在民和民选政府。民主具有如下基本特点:(1)政权的合法性来自人民,政治权力来源于人民;(2)政治统治经过人民选择,(3)公民享有真正的选举权,各级政府的主要政务官员必须通过定期的竞选产生。(4)尊重多数人的决定,同时保护少数人的基本人权。一句话,民主使政府成为民有,民治,民享的现代公器。

    
宪政:宪政是通过法律规定和法治来保障宪法确定的公民基本自由和权利的原则,限制并划定政府权力和行为的边界,并提供相应的制度设施。

    
在中国,帝国皇权的时代早已一去不复返了;在世界范围内,威权体制也日近黄昏;公民应该成为真正的国家主人。祛除依赖明君清官的臣民意识,张扬权利为本、参与为责的公民意识,实践自由,躬行民主,尊奉法治,才是中国的根本出路。

    
三、我们的基本主张

    
藉此,我们本着负责任与建设性的公民精神对国家政制、公民权利与社会发展诸方面提出如下具体主张:

    1
、修改宪法:根据前述价值理念修改宪法,删除现行宪法中不符合主权在民原则的条文,使宪法真正成为人权的保证书和公共权力的许可状,成为任何个人、团体和党派不得违反的可以实施的最高法律,为中国民主化奠定法权基础。

    2
、分权制衡:构建分权制衡的现代政府,保证立法、司法、行政三权分立。确立法定行政和责任政府的原则,防止行政权力过分扩张;政府应对纳税人负责;在中央和地方之间建立分权与制衡制度,中央权力须由宪法明确界定授权,地方实行充分自治。

    3
、立法民主:各级立法机构由直选产生,立法秉持公平正义原则,实行立法民主。

    4
、司法独立:司法应超越党派、不受任何干预,实行司法独立,保障司法公正;设立宪法法院,建立违宪审查制度,维护宪法权威。尽早撤销严重危害国家法治的各级党的政法委员会,避免公器私用。

    5
、公器公用:实现军队国家化,军人应效忠于宪法,效忠于国家,政党组织应从军队中退出,提高军队职业化水平。包括警察在内的所有公务员应保持政治中立。消除公务员录用的党派歧视,应不分党派平等录用。

    6
、人权保障:切实保障人权,维护人的尊严。设立对最高民意机关负责的人权委员会,防止政府滥用公权侵犯人权,尤其要保障公民的人身自由,任何人不受非法逮捕、拘禁、传讯、审问、处罚,废除劳动教养制度。

    7
、公职选举:全面推行民主选举制度,落实一人一票的平等选举权。各级行政首长的直接选举应制度化地逐步推行。定期自由竞争选举和公民参选法定公共职务是不可剥夺的基本人权。

    8
、城乡平等:废除现行的城乡二元户籍制度,落实公民一律平等的宪法权利,保障公民的自由迁徙权。

    9
、结社自由:保障公民的结社自由权,将现行的社团登记审批制改为备案制。开放党禁,以宪法和法律规范政党行为,取消一党垄断执政特权,确立政党活动自由和公平竞争的原则,实现政党政治正常化和法制化。

    10
、集会自由:和平集会、游行、示威和表达自由,是宪法规定的公民基本自由,不应受到执政党和政府的非法干预与违宪限制。

    11
、言论自由:落实言论自由、出版自由和学术自由,保障公民的知情权和监督权。制订《新闻法》和《出版法》,开放报禁,废除现行《刑法》中的煽动颠覆国家政权罪条款,杜绝以言治罪。

    12
、宗教自由:保障宗教自由与信仰自由,实行政教分离,宗教信仰活动不受政府干预。审查并撤销限制或剥夺公民宗教自由的行政法规、行政规章和地方性法规;禁止以行政立法管理宗教活动。废除宗教团体(包括宗教活动场所)必经登记始获合法地位的事先许可制度,代之以无须任何审查的备案制。

    13
、公民教育:取消服务于一党统治、带有浓厚意识形态色彩的政治教育与政治考试,推广以普世价值和公民权利为本的公民教育,确立公民意识,倡导服务社会的公民美德。

    14
、财产保护:确立和保护私有财产权利,实行自由、开放的市场经济制度,保障创业自由,消除行政垄断;设立对最高民意机关负责的国有资产管理委员会,合法有序地展开产权改革,明晰产权归属和责任者;开展新土地运动,推进土地私有化,切实保障公民尤其是农民的土地所有权。

    15
、财税改革:确立民主财政和保障纳税人的权利。建立权责明确的公共财政制度构架和运行机制,建立各级政府合理有效的财政分权体系;对赋税制度进行重大改革,以降低税率、简化税制、公平税负。非经社会公共选择过程,民意机关决议,行政部门不得随意加税、开征新税。通过产权改革,引进多元市场主体和竞争机制,降低金融准入门槛,为发展民间金融创造条件,使金融体系充分发挥活力。

    16
、社会保障:建立覆盖全体国民的社会保障体制,使国民在教育、医疗、养老和就业等方面得到最基本的保障。

    17
、环境保护:保护生态环境,提倡可持续发展,为子孙后代和全人类负责;明确落实国家和各级官员必须为此承担的相应责任;发挥民间组织在环境保护中的参与和监督作用。

    18
、联邦共和:以平等、公正的态度参与维持地区和平与发展,塑造一个负责任的大国形象。维护香港、澳门的自由制度。在自由民主的前提下,通过平等谈判与合作互动的方式寻求海峡两岸和解方案。以大智慧探索各民族共同繁荣的可能途径和制度设计,在民主宪政的架构下建立中华联邦共和国。

    19
、转型正义:为历次政治运动中遭受政治迫害的人士及其家属,恢复名誉,给予国家赔偿;释放所有政治犯和良心犯,释放所有因信仰而获罪的人员;成立真相调查委员会,查清历史事件的真相,厘清责任,伸张正义;在此基础上寻求社会和解。

    
四、结语

    
中国作为世界大国,作为联合国安理会五个常任理事国之一和人权理事会的成员,理应为人类和平事业与人权进步做出自身的贡献。但令人遗憾的是,在当今世界的所有大国里,唯独中国还处在威权主义政治生态中,并由此造成连绵不断的人权灾难和社会危机,束缚了中华民族的自身发展,制约了人类文明的进步——这种局面必须改变!政治民主化变革不能再拖延下去。

    
为此,我们本着勇于践行的公民精神,公布《零八宪章》。我们希望所有具有同样危机感、责任感和使命感的中国公民,不分朝野,不论身份,求同存异,积极参与到公民运动中来,共同推动中国社会的伟大变革,以期早日建成一个自由、民主、宪政的国家,实现国人百余年来锲而不舍的追求与梦想。