In 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft traveled through the Scandinavian countries, and remarked in a letter, “Though the king of Denmark be an absolute monarch, yet the Norwegians appear to enjoy all the blessings of freedom . . . You will be surprised to hear me talk of liberty; yet the Norwegians appear to me to be the most free community I have ever observed.”Footnote 1 Today, social scientists are also surprised by the Scandinavian countries: why do they have substantially higher levels of trust than other countries?Footnote 2 How have they managed to create a higher degree of income equality; to create free public services like schools, universities and healthcare; and how can tax levels be significantly higher than in most other Western countries,Footnote 3 without much protest from the electorate? Intellectual historians have tried to locate the intellectual roots of the “Nordic model,” and a common starting point has been the progressive impulse of the social-democratic or socialist labour movements in all three countries, beginning in the late nineteenth century, and all forming governments before and especially after the Second World War, becoming the principal founders of the modern welfare systems.Footnote 4 A more surprising claim has been that the Scandinavian countries were influenced by a German intellectual heritage going back to the mid-nineteenth century, with roots in a “state-friendly” Hegelian thought, with little resistance to an expansive bureaucracy.Footnote 5 I do not reject these perspectives altogether, but will propose a third alternative. I will claim that an important background to the egalitarian ethos of the Scandinavians and the intellectual roots of the “Nordic model” is the neo-Roman or republican concept of liberty, particularly through the example of the American republicans in the late eighteenth century.Footnote 6 I will demonstrate this by the case of the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, which in particular was influenced by the language and ideas of the American founding fathers and their Declaration of Independence of 1776, which later became an ideal for social movements and progressives also in Denmark and Sweden.Footnote 7
The Norwegian Constitution was the last in a series of modern European constitutions inspired by the American and French examples over a period of nearly forty years, beginning with the American Declaration of Independence, and ending with the Norwegian 1814 Grunnlov.Footnote 8 Shortly afterwards, constitutions that were formed as a reaction to this revolutionary period emerged, and most of the national declarations of sovereignty that came out of the 1776–1814 period disappeared; the only two left today from this period are in fact the American and the Norwegian ones.Footnote 9 Little has been written in English about the Norwegian Constitution, or about Denmark–Norway's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, which led to the secession,Footnote 10 and in the existing literature in the Scandinavian languages, republican theory has only to a marginal extent been applied to understanding the constitutional debates.Footnote 11 I will revisit the debates preceding the 17 May Constitution, and propose that the republican ideas of liberty, where freedom is defined as independence from arbitrary power, formed the intellectual background and context for the debates.Footnote 12 The recovery of the neo-Roman or republican theoretical tradition in modern political thought, which has by now influenced generations of historians, philosophers and political scientists,Footnote 13 is of crucial importance to understanding the rhetoric of the Norwegian constitutional debates and its end product, as well as Scandinavian social and political movements in the nineteenth century in general. Second, I will discuss the question of the independence and self-government of states, in connection with the constitutional debates. Third, I will look at the debates concerning the question of nobility and titles, and how this was related to the question of trust. I will also focus on core dimensions of the republican vocabulary in the debates, such as liberty versus slavery; courage versus servility; honor versus dishonor; and nobility, titles and orders versus an egalitarian minded, patriotic people. Together, these three dimensions point to a thoroughly republican frame of discourse in the debates at Eidsvoll. While the influence of the American independence movement on the Norwegian Constitution is already well established in the literature,Footnote 14 focusing on the republican discourse in these debates is largely a break with the standard narratives, as the constitution and its architects are almost exclusively described as examples of “liberalism.”Footnote 15 These narratives usually overlook important tensions in the history of liberalism, however, between different economic ideologies, policies and interests.Footnote 16 I believe the recent scholarship done on republicanism forces us to revise this notion and nuance our concepts for understanding this phase in Scandinavian politics. Precisely because liberty was the most important concept in the whole 1814 Constitution, the transformation in perspective resulting from replacing a liberal concept of liberty with a republican one should not be underestimated, and the consequences of such a gestalt switch have not been noted or drawn out before. This change in perspective has the further important effect that while historians both left and right of centre have agreed that the Scandinavian popular movements of the nineteenth century—e.g. the labour movement, the women's movement, the peasant movement and the anti-slavery movement—were juxtaposed to the “liberal” founding fathers and to liberalism in general, the present reinstatement of a republican set of ideas in the 1814 Constitution implies a stronger “familiarity” between the Norwegian independence movement and the later popular movements in all three Scandinavian countries (who all subscribed to the notion of liberty as independence from arbitrary power), thus paving the way for further studies of a particular “Scandinavian republicanism.”Footnote 17
TOWARDS A NEW CONSTITUTION: ENVOLD FALSEN'S ESSAY ON FREEDOM AND LIBERTY
Few years after Mary Wollstonecraft's stay, the question of independence in Norway became more pressing, as the foreign policy of Denmark–Norway went against Norway's interests; Britain's bombardment of Copenhagen in 1801 and the 1807 annexation of the Danish–Norwegian fleet had dire consequences for Norway, as the ensuing blockade led to a famine in the years between 1807 and 1809.Footnote 18 A central member of the temporary government body set up during the 1807–9 blockade, the influential and popular lawyer and playwright Envold Falsen (1755–1808) struggled daily with the lack of finances and increasing famine in the country. Already in 1802, he had written a short pamphlet on liberty, clearly envisaging a possible constitution for Norway, signaling its independence.Footnote 19 His son Christian Magnus Falsen would, six years after his father's death, become one of the most important founding fathers and architects of the 1814 Constitution.Footnote 20 He had long been influenced by the modern ideas of national sovereignty and independence, and it is claimed that he brought prepared drafts of a constitution to the assembly at Eidsvoll, written by his father, Envold Falsen.Footnote 21 For our present purposes, Envold Falsen's essay from 1802, called “What Is Liberty, and Where Shall We Seek It?” (“Hvad er Frihed, og hvor skal vi søge den?”), is thus of particular interest. Falsen discusses the nature of freedom and liberty, with possible political aims for Norway in mind.Footnote 22 If Falsen's essay in some ways parallels Paine's Common Sense, as a pamphlet intended to achieve a break with colonialism, it is written by an older man who, unlike Paine in 1776, had already witnessed the darker side of the revolutionary battles through the Terror in France. Falsen certainly wrote in a less combative and militant vein than Paine, and his aim was to reconcile the republican principles of a free public sphere and division of executive power and legislature, within a realm secured by a monarch. Regarding this aim as a realistic political compromise, Falsen urged his readers not to dismiss a gain for liberty even if it meant accepting the monarchical system.Footnote 23 Nevertheless, although arguing for accepting a monarch, Falsen's essay is a pamphlet urging for the making of a national constitution and a bolstering of civic virtues and patriotic courage—just like Paine had done in his call for American independence.
Falsen presents a brief history of liberty in his essay. Today, we usually ascertain four historical periods where the theory of liberty as non-domination and independence played a decisive role. First, as part of antiquity, in the Roman law, where the republican discourse is found in the works of Livy, Tacitus and Sallust; second, in the free republics and city-states of Italy from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, where especially Machiavelli becomes its primary theorist. The third phase takes place in Britain in the seventeenth century, where the writings of Machiavelli are found and debated by writers like Marchamont Nedham, Algernon Sidney and James Harrington, whose writings reflected the rebellion against and execution of King Charles I.Footnote 24 The fourth and most important of these phases was in the American colonies, where this concept of liberty prepared the ground for the Declaration of Independence and the break with Britain, thus inspiring revolutions all over Europe, with the French Revolution being the most important.
As a tale of liberty through the ages, Falsen's text seems concerned with giving a more balanced view of political history than former republican calls to arms; he reminded the reader that some undemocratic states had shown great civic virtue, and some democracies had turned into tyrannies. Always putting an emphasis on public or civic virtue rather than formal democratic systems, Falsen praises the Spartans for a greater public spirit than the Athenians, as the Athenians admired the rhetoricians, while the Spartans respected the laws. Rome created the republics and democratic institutions, but also gave rise to an imperial state that became tyrannical. When the Roman Empire fell, freedom was crushed through centuries under a religious caesar, issuing his dictates from a religious capitol. The feudal spirit encapsulated the world. Only with the American Revolution had “the tree of liberty” been securely planted in modern political life, Falsen stated. Falsen had been accused of betraying his revolutionary republican sentiments after the French Terror; this pamphlet was partly an answer to the accusations.Footnote 25 The text makes it clear that although he had become more temperate with age, Falsen's definition of freedom still corresponded with the republican one, and he remained an unflinching supporter of the American Revolution.
The concept of arbitrariness, so central to the republican understanding of liberty, is connected to the concept of will; living under arbitrary rule means living under, or being dependent upon, another person's will. In the opening of his work, Falsen discusses the definition of liberty:
If Man confuses Liberty with unconstrained exertion of will, it is clear that he by the most erroneous deduction unites concepts more heterogeneous than fire and water. Such a liberty would turn the world into a battleground.—Man's relation to Man would, in accordance to the teachings of Hobbes, become a perpetual war, and the most precious gift from the Creator to All, would become the prey of the stronger.Footnote 26
We see that Hobbes's anti-republican sentiment is rejected by Falsen, as he does not accept Hobbes's view of freedom as an individual trait always found in a battle of wills, where only the absence of interference safeguards it. Falsen proceeds along more classic lines, seeing liberty expressed in agency in social issues and the establishment of laws on the one hand, and independence from arbitrary power on the other:
When one regards Man as a citizen of a State, we distinguish between political and civic Liberty. The former consists in our direct or mediated agency in deciding upon the Circumstances regulating the relations between the members of society, we call these Circumstances for Laws. The latter is achieved when each member of society, unimpeded by arbitrary treatment, sees oneself and one's rights as protected by firm Laws, and in the final analysis, this is expressed in the concept of Security.Footnote 27
Falsen's concept of political liberty emphasizes agency in public affairs and in creating laws, and independence from an arbitrary will, quite in accordance with a republican concept of liberty. Later in the essay, Falsen draws a historic line through the American Revolution over the French, and emphasized that although the Norwegians did not share the American animosity towards the English (an important point, since Norway wanted independence from Denmark partly in order to obtain greater trade with the English), the American example is, in Falsen's view, liberty's most precious historical moment. Throughout Falsen's essay we see a clear appeal to the republican virtues, both personal and national, at the same time as he reminds the reader that civic virtue actually may thrive under an enlightened monarch:
The wise lawgiver, who wishes liberty and prosperity for his country, will willingly listen to the contributions sensible citizens put forth through their voices or pens to further Enlightenment . . . It isn't only in the Annals of Democracy that the muses of History have written down the true civic virtues, these high-spirited Sacrifices that through the ages have exalted both the Man and the Citizen . . .Footnote 28
Falsen used the brave Danish resistance against the British attack and bombardment of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, under Lord Nelson, as an example of the heroic sacrifice in the face of a mighty enemy: this was a mark of true civic spirit, demonstrated under an absolute monarchy. Falsen's aim in his text is thus to argue for the possibility of a state where civic virtue may prosper under an enlightened monarch who subscribes to the ideas, a state where equality before the law is secured and the monarch is its first servant; in short, a republican monarchy:
[liberty] flees from democracy, when individuals try to rise above the equal line that is drawn up by the Laws; when the Citizens seek Gold before Virtue, and change the Law into a spider's web, that only is able to stop the weak, but is torn through by the Mighty. It is present in the Monarchy, when the Regent, having made the Law, himself is its first servant, and, as he enforces it with a strong hand, creates peace for all Citizens.Footnote 29
An independent person is free, unbound by any slave-like bonds to other people, or to his own passions, whether for food, drink, drugs or sexual pleasures. A state consisting of strong, self-assertive and enlightened individuals is the best guarantee against a tyranny; whereas a state consisting of cowed, frightened, servile and dependent people will necessarily deteriorate as a whole. Falsen concludes his essay on freedom and liberty with a parable about personal, individual freedom: although one is not a slave to one's own desires or to other men, one might not always be lucky in life, and sometimes fate deals a blow to even the most virtuous of men. However, should storms of rage and envy come upon him, or should violence deprive him of his external, physical freedom, it would not disturb the inner freedom in his chest. Should the slaves of vices envy him the air he breathed, or “should Evil succeed in giving him the posion goblet—very well! He would empty it with the calm smile of Virtue, and having lived independent from passions, unconquered by vice, his own master, slave to none, he dies free like Socrates.”Footnote 30 Written by an aging republican, at a time of war and hardship for Norway, Falsen's essay aimed at a piece of realpolitik: a constitution creating more democratic laws for Norway, under a monarch who could secure national independence with approval from neighboring states. In Falsen's view, men of virtue could never be robbed of their freedom and honor, even if imprisoned or even murdered, as long as they remained true to their principles and convictions. Thus Falsen rejected the Hobbesian concept of freedom as lack of physical restraint or interference from others. Six years later, he took his own life, at the worst point of the Norwegian famine, while he was still part of the government.Footnote 31
NORWAY AFTER NAPOLEON
Twelve years later, the time was ripe for Falsen's ideas, as the ties to Denmark suddenly were weakened. In October 1813, Napoleon's army was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig by a coalition army including Swedish troops under Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte's command. Formerly one of Napoleon's favourite marshals, and ennobled as prince of Corvo for his services, Bernadotte now led the Swedish forces under the title of Crown Prince Charles John. Sweden had toppled their King Gustav IV Adolf in 1809 in favour of his uncle Charles XIII, who had no male descendants. As the Swedish military wanted a strategically adept monarch, Bernadotte had been offered the Swedish crown.
Having supported France in the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark had to negotiate with the Swedes, and it was evident they would lose Norway. On 14 January 1814, Danish King Frederic VI ceded Norway to Sweden as part of the Kiel peace treaty. Danish king Frederic's nephew and future successor Christian Frederic, who felt deprived of a part of his prospective kingdom, took immediate steps to spark up Norwegian protests against the secession, so Norway could remain in Danish hands. The time was ripe, as a storm of patriotic sentiments in Norway had long been brewing. His older Norwegian friend, the businessman Carsten Anker, had written to him already in April 1812 that Norway had only three alternatives: to become a province of Sweden, “to throw itself in the hands of England, or to declare itself independent of all and elect a king.”Footnote 32 Anker more than hinted that a declaration of Norwegian independence could lead to the election of Christian Frederic as king, and thus a prolonged union with Denmark.Footnote 33
Already in October 1812, Bernadotte had sent his deputy, Colonel Bjørnstjerna, to the British Prince Regent, suggesting that Norway be conjoined with Sweden in a union, although with its own laws, political representation and financial institutions, thus with its own self-governance, within the realm of the joint monarch.Footnote 34 He compared the solution to the relation between Scotland and England, and emphasized that Sweden only wanted Norway as a geopolitical buffer for its own security, but otherwise would grant it political independence.Footnote 35
The Norwegian public was incensed by the outrage of their state being “handed over like a herd of cattle” between their neighbor states as a consequence of the Kiel treaty.Footnote 36 In the months following King Frederic's secession of Norway in January 1814, an intense intellectual and ideological battle ensued over the question of Norwegian sovereignty and independence, leading to the first modern Norwegian constitution on 17 May 1814.
As we now know how the republican ideas of liberty as independence from arbitrary power spread during the late eighteenth century, placing the 1814 Constitution in a republican context has many advantages over the conventional liberal reading; it gives a better understanding of the period's upsurge in patriotism and restores to us the context and self-perception of the actors at that time.Footnote 37 The whole frame of reference for the actors, with their many tributes to ancient Rome, honor and virtue, are more or less incomprehensible to modern readers if they are unaware of the underlying political theory of republicanism.Footnote 38
THE DANGEROUS WORD “INDEPENDENCE”
On 10 April 1814, 112 men convened at Carsten Anker's farm at Eidsvoll, to prepare a draft of the constitution. Carsten Anker himself was not present; he had gone to Britain to secure support for Norway's independence. Among the men chosen as delegates, a significant number of them—all the civil servants (embetsmenn)—had studied under the Danish law professor J. W. F. Schlegel, whose courses in the principles of government had been a pervasive influence.Footnote 39 Schlegel taught both the classic legal theories of the monarchy, and modern views of state formation, including the American and French constitutions, as well as political theorists like Hobbes, Locke, Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.Footnote 40 His presentation of Hobbes is interesting, as Schlegel said of him that Hobbes “found several opponents, who had to conjure up all their talents to refute him. Thereby, the Political Legal Theory won a lot.”Footnote 41 Thus accentuating the refutations of Hobbes rather than his own contribution, Schlegel gave a nod to the republican side, at a time when the American Constitution had proved victorious. Schlegel criticized Fichte's legal theory for cutting the connection between morality and constitution, leading to arbitrariness.Footnote 42 While Fichte, like Kant, argued for a primary social contract, Fichte's variety was “a contract of submission, not unlike Hobbes's,” according to Schlegel.Footnote 43 In his seminars, Schlegel accentuated Locke, Paine, Rousseau and Kant, who all subscribed to the concept of liberty as independence from arbitrary power, hence the Norwegians who studied under Schlegel would all be informed by this republican concept of liberty.Footnote 44 Now, in light of all the European intellectual influences, did the American one have any precedence? The scholarly literature on this point is generally in agreement that the successful American political example was the most important.Footnote 45 Christian Magnus Falsen declared only three years after the Constitution that “especially with respect to the organization of the national representation, one had nearly exclusively the American Constitution as a model.”Footnote 46 (That Falsen christened his son “George Benjamin,” after Washington and Franklin, further attests to the fact.) His father Envold Falsen had stated in his pamphlet on liberty that only North America had succeeded in planting a lasting “tree of liberty,” where “the tax on the tea and the Stamp Act added barrels to the long fuming fire, enflamed by Paine's boldness, but governed by Franklin's wisdom.”Footnote 47 Falsen's colloquial reference to Thomas Paine makes it evident that he was known in Norway at the time, and that is further exemplified by a 1796 newspaper clipping from Trondheim, mentioning “the honorable Thomas Paine” in a way that assumed readers’ familiarity with him.Footnote 48 We also know that in 1814 the Constitutional Assembly would have a five-volume, leather-bound edition of The Laws of the United States of America at their disposal, sent to them by Peter Greve Bredahl, who had bought them in Baltimore.Footnote 49 The Norwegian Constitution's central focus on liberty, popular sovereignty and the division of powers between Odelsting and Lagting, corresponding to the House of Representatives and the Senate, all point to a thoroughly American influence.Footnote 50
The American Declaration of Independence and the Revolution in France, as well as the battles for independence in Switzerland and the Netherlands, had been great inspirations to the Norwegian public;Footnote 51 the very word “independence,” however, was a dangerous one in the situation. In the diary of Danish prince Christian Frederic, and in some of his preliminary sketches during the constitutional process, he uses the French term indépendence both for what Norwegians call uavhengighet (German Unabhängigkeit), and for selvstendighet (German Selbständigkeit), literally “self-governance,” both usually translated as “independence.”Footnote 52 In German and Norwegian usage, the distinction between these two terms was legally significant as regards the independence of states: a state could be self-governed (selvstendig) in the sense that it had its own laws and its own army, while still being united or linked with another state in a political union. An independent (uavhengig) state, however, could not be part of such a union unless it was the dominant one.Footnote 53 The latter sense corresponds to that of the American colonies declaring independence to break away from Britain. “Independent” is thus a stronger form of national self-sufficiency than “self-governance.”Footnote 54 In its union with Denmark, Norway already did have a degree of self-governance, having its own laws and its own army (yet sharing a fleet with Denmark, sailing under the Dannebrog flag). Demands for a greater degree of self-governance had been voiced clearly and with ever stronger insistence in the years preceding the 1814 Constitution; never more so than after Britain's bombardment of Copenhagen in 1801 and following annexation of the Danish–Norwegian fleet in 1807, which left Norway isolated and afflicted by famine in the years 1808–9 and again in 1812. Norway demanded its own fleet, its own banking and finance institutions, its own grain reserves and its own university (the latter being opened in 1811).
As we shall see, Christian Frederic spoke like a very modern monarch to the Eidsvoll delegates, but made sure he never said that Norway in itself would be an independent state. Whenever he used “independent” it was conjoined with the vague “we,” and whenever he spoke of Norway (and not Denmark–Norway) he used the weaker term “self-governed.” Performing a strategic rhetorical and tactical game to win the Norwegians over, Christian Frederic downplayed the fact that his long-term aim was to support Norwegian self-governance (selvstendighet) and its constitution, but not its independence (uavhengighet), since he wanted, ultimately, a prolonged union between Norway and Denmark. To the extent that he wanted to arouse the national sentiments enough to preclude an alliance between Norway and Sweden, however, his short-term aim was to support the call for independence.
In Christian Frederic's throne speech on 11 April 1814, given when he opened the National Assembly convened to create the Constitution, we see several examples of how the prospective monarch employs the republican vocabulary ingeniously, stressing the need for laws and division of power, as well as a public sense of patriotism:
The wisest form of government is without doubt the one who secures Civic Liberty and sacred Laws, giving the executive power authority to perform all good things and to maintain the Laws; but you will not give Norway a form of government in line with the people's expectations, if you do not work together towards one and the same goal: The people's happiness. Banish every single doubt, fear or suspicion from your chests as regards the determination of Norway's Constitution; every Member of this Assembly should be a loyal, righteous Norwegian, and when he speaks his Convictions, he should remember the Fellow Citizens, in whose name he speaks. Should anyone ever tell you, that Norway cannot exist as a Self-governed State, then let the Love of the Fatherland flare up in your chests.Footnote 55
These were surely new and unexpected tones from the son of the former absolute monarch. Clear though it was that he aimed for the throne, his speech made it equally clear that he would not become a sovereign like his father. Here we find modern constitutional ideas like the division of power, respect for the laws, civic liberty, added to republican patriotism and self-governance. Indeed, self-governance, not independence—but many of the delegates did not consider the distinction.Footnote 56 The emphasis on division of power between laws and the executive power seemed most important; the delegates educated under Schlegel in Copenhagen might have known well that Kant had defined republicanism in 1795 as “the principle of severing the executive power of the government from the legislature.”Footnote 57 Christian Frederic continued to bolster the Norwegian demand for independence by admitting that Norway's finances ought not to be administered from Sweden, in a striking paragraph that focused on the dishonor of voluntarily submitting to a dominating will:
Are we not used to deprivation? And is any deprivation greater than lacking Liberty? Does it not lie in the people's power to create a form of government based on the state's income and the means already in its possession? Norway has never demanded of Denmark to be responsible for its finances! In peaceful days, this realm has provided surplus for the state's treasury, and now Sweden wants to unite with Norway, to support the Norwegian people on alms? Where do these fearful doubts lead? Only to a voluntary submission. In truth, what is a people worth, that fearfully sacrifices its Self-government and Honor? It is worth only the slave's chains, that since Eternity were prepared for it!Footnote 58
Norway's hardships during the war and the blockade were well known to him, as was the Norwegian hope of renewed trade with Britain, which could make a great improvement. Christian Frederic thus made sure to suggest possible resolutions to the blockade, and that he already had taken diplomatic steps by writing letters to the state leaders of several nations, whereas the Swedish king had returned his letter unopened.Footnote 59 Although the blockade had precluded further responses, Christian Frederic noted that ships with British flags in Norwegian harbours had again been seen,Footnote 60 hinting that the British ships in Norwegian waters were due to his influence. That Bernadotte in Sweden had already secured support from Britain, none of the delegates could yet know. Near the grande finale of his throne speech, Prince Christian Frederic warned the delegates against Norway ending up under Swedish rule, while emphasizing that he knew which qualities a good monarch should possess: “Oh! Would the King that proclaims to be the Father of the Norwegian People also honor its Rights, and grant peace and prosperity for the Nordic countries; our only wish is to live independently in good understanding with an honorable neighbouring people.”Footnote 61 Again, we see that Christian Frederic employed the strong word “independence,” but in a setting where its meaning was ambiguous. Remark that the context of the “independently” is the “we,” which could mean “our two countries together,” thus leaving the door open for a new or prolonged union between Denmark and Norway, a union which, as a whole, could indeed be legally independent. Some of the delegates did not think it would be in Norway's best interest to declare itself an independent state, as they thought a small country required strong alliances. As the prince uttered the word “independently,” some of the delegates were worried that he meant “absolute self-governance,” or, indeed “independence” for Norway. This is, however, the only time in the speech that Christian Frederic uses the term “independent,” whereas elsewhere he says “self-governed.” Having gone to such lengths to show his knowledge of modern political ideas and respect for Norway's ideals of independence, Christian Frederic landed on a more monarchic note:
no one can foresee the events or revolutions that Europe as a whole, or single states, may still experience until the general Peace re-creates calm and calls for the return of Happiness and Prosperity. Fortune falls upon the country that, in the face of hardship and many miseries, with unflinching loyalty, first to their King, and then to their own Rights and National Worth, will prevail in the good battle until happier days appear.Footnote 62
After Christian Frederic's opening address, the Assembly gathered to discuss an official thank-you note to the Danish prince, and one of the staunchest opponents of continued Danish–Norwegian relations, Nicolai Wergeland, rose. Wergeland's main aim was to remind the Assembly that, although grateful to Christian Frederic, and convinced of his modern views of the well-being of the public, they were actually free to choose not to elect him king. Wergeland was of the opinion that it was high time for Denmark–Norway to secede, and already on the first day he hammered the point in. Where Christian Frederic had trod waters with “self-governance,” Wergeland used the stronger term “independent” as often as he could:
This Assembly is national and Norwegian—the Assembly is thus free. We appear as an honest people, resolved from our Oath of Loyalty, and given back our free and independent Right as a Nation to decide upon our form of Government, a Right both Friend and Foe advise us to calmly enjoy. If we appear as a free and independent people, however, then this Assembly too is absolutely free and independent, and is now alone in possession of the Nation's Sovereignty. This Liberty, and this Independence, must be the first we assert to defend and uphold; for, noble Gentlemen, distinguished Assembly, if we do not proclaim the Assembly's own Liberty and Rights, how shall we then proclaim them for the People?Footnote 63
Wergeland answered his rhetorical question by affirming their responsibility on behalf of the state, and simultaneously limiting the role of the Danish prince: “Anything this Assembly,): the free Norwegian People, has not sanctioned, is invalid. This is why we are gathered here. A Regent must be ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat [unable to harm the State], so that we calmly can consider our questions at hand.”Footnote 64 He went on, “He has himself declared that it depends on this Assembly's decisions, whether he still shall be in office. And this I must confess, the Prince who did not like or respect the steps taken by the People's independent and free Representation, he could not be King for Norwegians.”Footnote 65 On the 16 April, Christian Magnus Falsen was the first to suggest that the first paragraph of the Constitution should describe the nation as “a free, independent and indivisible Kingdom.”Footnote 66
THE QUESTION OF NOBILITY
Already in antiquity, independence from arbitrary power grew from a legal definition of liberty into a normative ideal. Although respect for civic duties like serving the country and the laws were considered important, a republican would despise all forms of servitude under arbitrary rule: crawling sycophancy, opportunism, the taking of bribes, flattery—these were all seen as insincere modes of behavior from people not daring to be open and frank. Such lack of civic courage was perceived as a direct result of the presence of arbitrary power. In contrast to the republican ideal of free speech in a free public sphere, the level of secrecy and distrust that increases under a despotic tyranny was a sign of a weakened republic. Following from this premise, systems of nobility with titles and orders were perceived by republicans as contributing to a power network based on secret alliances that the public cannot oversee; such structures will corrupt the social fabric and undermine its strength against tyranny, the republican claims. Nobility would thus give rise to a servile attitude in public life and led to corruption, flattery and unmanly attitudes, ultimately a weakened people. Freedom and honor were virtues best bred and nurtured in a society of equals. In line with this spirit, the vicar Hans Jacob Grøgaard rose to give a speech against the institution of nobility and rule through titles and orders. Amply supplied with classic republican contempt for flattery and servility, his speech first attacked the element of distrust in the people and the destructive effects of conceit created by orders and titles:
A King who wants to lure his subjects to Virtue and Honor through titles and orders, he not only contradicts the concept of true Virtue and true Honor; but he contributes to confusing and obliterating the distinction altogether, among yet more people. To me at least, it is clear as day that the King who wishes to influence his subjects through titles and orders does not honor his people, he mocks it. He reminds me of the sly European who tempts the simple American with glass pearls. He seems to say: My people, or the mass of it, are not driven by noble causes; we cannot trust their Religion, Conscience or Patriotism; they must be enticed by Glimmer and Vanity, which will accomplish more than Religion and Conscience and Patriotism.Footnote 67
Grøgaard admitted to the audience that he knew well that many of the delegates present had received various orders of merit. He hastened to say that he did not attack those orders, as it was well known that the men present represented true virtue and honor. But their virtue was known even without their orders, Grøgaard maintained, and he hoped they would all agree that men who strove for medals rather than for what they represented were not truly honorable. Rhetorically, he asked whether this problem really was so great:
One might say that even Human Frailty may be employed, and as long as it is done for the useful service of the State, the motives are of little interest to the State. Permit me to ask: is it of little interest to the State, whether the National Character is corrupted? That the people are being blinded by vain Glimmer? That they are tempted into reaching for the shadow of Honor instead of Honor itself? That they are more and more smitten with the Title-and-Rank-disease? That they are content with seeming honest instead of being honest? That one is driven, not by noble and lasting motives, but by lowly and unsafe ones? Unsafe are indeed the lower motives. The great Napoleon's great power was founded on false Honor. Where is that power now, even though it was supported by the Legion of Honor? And all the many white bonnets with red edges that have been weaved in our time, were not enough to bind together the Danish–Norwegian State.”Footnote 68
Grøgaard said he did not demand any superhuman virtue or honor from Norway's men, but he did demand that they be men. He demanded that they, like their predecessors of the past, behaved like good, honorable Norwegians, above the pettiness of the era, and without having to bolster themselves through titles and orders. After a long debate on the question of nobility, Christian Magnus Falsen, one of the noblemen present, rose, and said that the members of the assembly probably knew that he was ‘coincidentally born a nobleman’. Those who knew him would know how little he had valued this so-called advantage. He had never believed “that Birth can transfer qualities one otherwise lacks.”Footnote 69 He would have discarded his nobility long ago, had he not believed that his move could be misinterpreted, but now that the general debate had ended, he was happy to renounce his nobility.Footnote 70
Falsen went on to say that people might hold it against him that his nobility was without prerogatives, so that his rejection of it really meant little to the state in the form of saved expenses, and not a high benefit for him to forswear. Falsen added that he did not consider it a sacrifice at all; he just wanted it to be known that he did not want any advantage over his countrymen, neither for himself nor for his descendants, even if it was just in a name. Thus he renounced his family's nobility. In Denmark, the family Falsen is still part of the nobility to this day.Footnote 71
Grøgaard concluded by calling for a paragraph in the Constitution abolishing the use of all titles and orders. Despite the many delegates with orders present, Grøgaard's clearly republican speech met with firm approval, and in the Article 108 of the Norwegian Constitution, nobility was simply abolished through the single sentence “No earldoms, baronies, entailed estates or fideicommissa may be created in the future.”Footnote 72
WILL NORWAY BE INDEPENDENT?
Clearly exasperated over what he called ‘the dying of the assembly's independence, and of the people's faith in it’,Footnote 73 which meant that he saw that the assembly would probably elect Christian Frederic, Nicolai Wergeland rose to give a thundering speech about the need to remain manly in face of the royal demands, and never forget the expectations of the people. Reminding the assembly of the need to abhor servility and speak freely, even though it could be threatening, Wergeland professed that he for one was willing to give his life for the fatherland: “I swore an oath on my soul when I left my home, that I would be blind to all personal interests, all personal advantages; and no tempting hopes would turn me into a traitor against my Norwegian brothers.”Footnote 74 Claiming that the delegates shied away from discussing Norwegian foreign policy, Wergeland reminded the participants that their power emanated from their status as the people's representatives:
What contradictions! Such inconsistencies! The same people that called for the irreproachable tenet that sovereignty lies in the hands of the people, dare to claim that this honorable gathering of the people's servants have nothing to do with the people's cause. Is, then, an Act made by the whole, gathered people even possible? How else can the people perform its sovereignty? How else can it show its genuine will than through its delegates? And are we not the people's delegates? Shall the happiness of hundreds of thousands of people yield to that of an individual? Are we gathered only to erect a Throne, to serve a dominion, or to secure the national happiness of this brave people for coming centuries?Footnote 75
In many accounts of the debates preceding the Constitution, the question of monarchy is relegated to the background. Wergeland's speech shows that this aspect of republicanism was not absent from the debates either:
What solace do we have for the longing people that vacillates between hope and fear—what comfort can we offer it, when we return home and they ask: “What have you done for us? What became our destiny?” Mustn't we blushingly cast down our eyes, when our only answer is this: “We have built a Throne for you—otherwise, we know nothing! We have built a Throne for you—that was all we were allowed. That was enough! You just eat, drink and be merry!”Footnote 76
Georg Sverdrup (1770–1850) was a central figure in the majority faction at Eidsvoll, the so-called “Independents” (Selvstændighedspartiet). It has been pointed out that this label is a misnomer, as everyone at Eidsvoll actually was in favour of Norway's selvstændighed, but that this faction also wanted uafhængighed; that is, the strong independence that precluded a union.Footnote 77 When Sverdrup began his speech, he cut straight to the heart of the matter, questioning the way Norway as a people and nation were to be handed over from one country to another; could anyone, he asked, even the most uninhibited monarch, be justified in handing over a people he had ruled, to any one nation, government or prince?Footnote 78 This, Sverdrup continued, was a question of freedom, independence and honor on the one hand, and of slavery, dependence and disgrace on the other:
To sell oneself as a slave, to surrender one's personal freedom and independence [selvstændighed] to another's will, who may thereby treat us no longer as persons, but as lifeless objects or mute animals, is a morally impossible act, that dissolves itself. It is an impossible act for individuals, should it not be equally impossible for peoples or states?Footnote 79
Sverdrup's speech closely echoes John Locke's elaboration of this point in his chapter on slavery in A Treatise on Government, where he denies the possibility of surrendering one's freedom as a human being to someone else.Footnote 80 Sverdrup urged his fellow delegates to show courage in the face of a greater enemy:
We are neither conquered—the enemy hasn't set foot on our territory—nor are we yet so weak that we through cowardly surrender have more to lose than we might gain through brave resistance. The enemy's own cowardice, intrigues, flattery and bargaining with foreign powers clearly demonstrate that we, in our own country at least, are quite on his level, if not entirely superior . . . Whether the duty to defend Liberty and Independence [selvstændighet] must yield to the duty to save lives or our physical existence, is a question that seems to belong to the more complicated parts of political philosophy. But who was ever criticized for having risked one's life in such a battle?Footnote 81
Having braced the delegates’ courage and self-esteem, Sverdrup argued against the view (which some of the delegates indeed did hold) that Norway was too weak to stand alone without being part of a union.
Norway is a poor country, one says; self-governed [selvstændig] or left to its own, it could not prevail, only in a union with others. This claim is, for more than one reason, quite untenable. I don't even want to say “the poorer, the better,” although experience and the nature of things have shown us that the nations that are by Nature blessed, often are the first ones having to bow for foreign or homespun despots, whereas precisely the ones with a barren soil and unsmiling weather are the ones that during the longest periods, and sometimes forever, have retained their freedom and independence [uavhængighed].Footnote 82
Note how Sverdrup employs the term selvstændig about Norway consistently, but suddenly changes to the stronger uavhængig when speaking of the nations that despite few natural resources (he has England in mind), manage to retain their independence forever. Sverdrup was among those who went farthest in demanding full, unabridged independence, like the Americans had done. Coming out like a revolutionary in the situation, Sverdrup insisted that Norway had little to lose from a veritable fight for their independence, but a lot to lose both in the eyes of the world and in their bargaining position with their possible victors if they did not raise the stakes. What would indeed be the worst that could happen if Norway decided to fight for its independence, but lost out to the Swedes, Sverdrup asked rhetorically, and answered by envisaging the new situation:
We would have fenced for our Independence and Honor, we have thereby fulfilled the duty we owe to ourselves to perform and to the World and Mankind to give an Example of. We have thereby, although conquered, taught our enemies to treat us with respect; since however much one professes to value Obedience and Submissiveness, these traits are generally despised when bred by Fear and Self-interest.Footnote 83
The militant conclusion of Sverdrup's speech was in fact the line that was to be followed. The assembly at Eidsvoll decided to insist upon a declaration of independence; they rejected the Swedes and the Kiel treaty, and instead voted to elect Danish prince Christian Frederic as king on 17 May 1814. Speaking of “nation” and “fatherland,” he swore to govern the kingdom of Norway in accordance with the basic law drafted by the elected men of the nation, hence, as a modern monarch after the French Revolution, he accepted that his legitimacy was founded on popular consent, and that the crown was a gift from the people.Footnote 84 The first paragraph of Norway's 17 May 1814 Constitution reads, “Norway is a free, independent [uavhængig] and indivisible Realm. Its form of government is a limited and hereditary monarchy.”Footnote 85
But it was a short-lived independence: Carsten Anker's attempt at gaining political support in Britain for the 17 May agreement and a fully independent Norway under Christian Frederic, was to no avail.Footnote 86 Britain's view was that they had agreed to Norway being transferred to Sweden as war reparation, and since the Norwegians would go from living under Danish absolute monarchy and despotism to gaining its own sovereign national constitution, they had already achieved a greater degree of freedom, and would have to accept a Swedish king.Footnote 87 Recognizing the Kiel peace treaty in conjunction with the Aabo treaty of 1812 affirmed by the British government, Britain stated that it could not support Norway's independence, but claimed to support its self-governance in a union with Sweden, “under the same Monarch.”Footnote 88
In the State Council (Statsråd) of 6–8 July 1814, where Christian Frederic convened the ministers as well as the former presidents of the National Assembly (Riksforsamlingen), Anker, Hegermann, Fabricius and Sverdrup, the following unanimous decision about the first paragraph of the Constitution was adjourned: “Regarding §1: That the word independent may be stricken.”Footnote 89 A war with Sweden broke out on 26 July 1814, the last war Sweden to this day has engaged in, as a result of which Norway was annexed in a personal union with Sweden as a “self-governed state.” Otherwise, Charles John famously in a key concession accepted the Norwegian Constitution. In 1905, Norway finally achieved a separation from Sweden.Footnote 90
CONCLUSION
Although the declaration of independence in the Norwegian Constitution of 1814 lasted only from 17 May 1814 until 6 July the same year, this was not perceived as a defeat. As a foundational document of the state and declaration of “self-government,” the Constitution was immediately celebrated as a triumph, and has been ever since; Norway had founded itself as a modern state, broken free of absolute monarchy, ceased its nobility and installed a system of suffrage among the most progressive in Europe. The Norwegian Constitution of 1814 became a political ideal for democratically minded Danes to such an extent that, literally, the demand for “a Norwegian Constitution,” including an end to absolute monarchy, was prevalent in Denmark in much of the nineteenth century.Footnote 91 The great impact of the republican language of liberty continued its spread in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia throughout the nineteenth century: we find the language of liberty as independence from arbitrary power in the labour movement, the women's movement and even the teetotal movement, as well as in the plays, poems and novels of the three Scandinavian countries towards the end of the nineteenth century – suffice it to mention Ibsen, Bjørnson, Strindberg and Brandes. In sum, we may speak of a “Scandinavian republicanism.” For all American Republicans of today who scorn the preposterous thought of any link between the USA and the Scandinavian countries, it may be a surprising thought that perhaps the intellectual and political roots of the equality impulse in these three countries were originally both American and republican.
The reason why the republican concept of liberty has not been deemed relevant by historians of the Norwegian Constitution in the twentieth century is probably partly due to the advent of the labour movement and in general the nineteenth-century ideologies of liberalism, socialism and conservatism, which made the notion of republicanism fade into the background and seem dated; partly also for the simple reason that in the 1814 debates, there was never really a question of abolishing the monarchy, and later historians would not then think republican theory very relevant to the political context. When I have tried in this paper to substantiate the extent to which the 1814 constitutional debates were marked by such a republican vocabulary and mode of thought, I believe myself to be contributing something new; however, I hasten to add that, like the recovery of the concept itself, this too is a process of rediscovery. The first to write a historical exposition of the Norwegian Constitution was Nicolai Wergeland's son Henrik Wergeland. An archivist by profession, Henrik Wergeland was prolific writer, poet, playwright, speaker and public figure, whose moral impact on the early nineteenth-century public sphere in Norway was profound. Throughout his writings, one finds references to republican values, and perhaps above all to its concept of liberty and its importance for humanity through its basic principle of openness, free speech and a free press.Footnote 92 Here is but one clear example, published nineteen years after the 1814 Constitution:
The strangest Way by which Humanity act, is through the free press. It eagerly and always tries to bring the abuse of power, the hundred-headed Tyranny, to defeat, in its essence, in a tendency to a general, absolute freedom that we call Republicanism, rooted in spiritual and traditional values, and which, even where its moral foundations are shaken or cowed, never escapes from creating happiness on Earth. This it can do, since it is at one with Humanity; only through its hands, which get bloodily torn, it attempts at conquering Heaven for the Earth; Humanity is its divine Heart. Therefore, the Republican is by his fellow men, though they are more dull or egotistical, believed to have a good will, even if he might show lack of Forces or Wisdom. Hence, no defeat is final to Republicanism, while one knows that the destiny of tyrannies always lies on a knife's edge.Footnote 93
As we have seen, the republican concept of liberty is not merely about ending monarchic rule, it is a view of liberty and the state, and the requirements of political honor and virtue to uphold both; it implies a view of an open public sphere as the basis for political power, as against secrecy among elites; it is a view, on the one hand, of the difference between freedom and slavery, and of the difference between freedom and tyranny on the other. Whenever we see debates containing the terms “arbitrary power,” “dependence,” “tyranny,” “despotism” and “independence,” we find ourselves on republican terrain. Recent research on republicanism in intellectual history has thus done us the great service of clarifying the distinctions between the notion of liberty before liberalism and socialism, the republican roots of both liberalism and socialism, and why we must have a more nuanced and fine-grained perspective for what we actually mean when we speak about freedom, and what they actually meant when they spoke about freedom.
