Enter Sir William Johnson...
Sir William Johnson, the northern superintendent, was an adept and assiduous practitioner of office. A canny and perceptive observer of his fellow man, he developed unusual sensitivity to rank, station, and the agency held by those around him.
His ability to work through the protocols and the performative rituals of office has contributed largely to his historical reputation as manipuÂlative, self-seeking, and compromised. This underestimates the extent to which he lived his life in public (in the early modern sense of that term).22 Though he had an eye for opportunity - and what early modern officeholder before the coming of the bureaucratic state could afford to close that eye? - he also had a strong sense of fairness and social order. His view on the Royal Proclamation's contribution to an orderly frontier was not positive.Sir William Johnson wrote to Lord Shelburne in 1766 explaining yet again the fraudulent practices by which First Nations were cheated of their land and that the Royal Proclamation 1763 had issued to prevent.[1053] [1054] [1055] The â€?thirst after InÂdian lands, is become almost universal', he feared, and â€?the people who generÂally want them, are either ignorant of, or remote from the consequences of disobliging the Indians'. Even at that stage he saw how the colonists' invocation of liberty acted as a barrier to effective measures: It is much easier to assign the cause of this, than it is to find a remedy for it, and therefore the evil is likely to encrease, whilst every salutary remedy is liable to be construed into a violation of liberty, tho' this tenderness for the liberty of the People may be carried so far, as to loose sight of the Royal Prerogative or the constitutional powers of the British legislature, this may often produce misrepresentations to His Majesty's Ministers, who cannot at all times detect evasions arising from subjects not well known even here?4 There was a kind of collusion between â€?persons of consequence' and the â€?lowÂest and most selfish of the Country Inhabitants'. being persons of consequence in the Capitals, who can let them lye dead as a sure Estate hereafter, and are totally ignorant of the Indians, make use of some of the lowest and most selfish of the Country Inhabitants, to seduce the Indians to their houses, where they are kept rioting in drunkÂenness till they have effected their bad purposes, to prevent which, the Gentlemen of the Law here say, my Commission is not sufficiently exÂpressive, nor will any Act of an American Legislature be obtained, that effects their private interest?5 Along with an inadequate commission and an unwilling legislature, Johnson condemned the Royal Proclamation and the emptiness of its provisions: An Inhabitant of this County, who has forced himself on the Mohawks low lands, and lives there without a Patent, has been repeatedly warned to withdraw, the Gov[ernor] has even severely threatened him for nonÂcompliance; I have repeatedly (at the earnest request of the Indians) wrote to him, and personally shewn him His Maj[esty's] Proclamat[ion] of 1763, and laid the matter before the Governour in Council and the AtÂtorney General, all which he laughs at, well knowing the party that is ready to support him, in so much, that it would only weaken the prerogaÂtive to prosecute him, as may be evinced in many similar cases.[1056] A more humiliating outcome could not be imagined. The Royal Proclamation was ridiculed rather than respected. Johnson's belief that office should be directed towards the common good was not cynical. The association of office and common good was the common stock of educated Englishmen nearly all of whom were reared on a strong diet of Cicero. Johnson's self-effacing modus and constant invocation of the greater good reflected the dictates of office and he took a cynical view of those whom he saw as putting self-interest first. Though thoroughly loyalist and an upholdÂer of prerogative to which one can doubtless add a great measure of self-belief and a knack for playing to his political masters, Johnson did not uphold royal authority for its own sake in matters concerning the management of First NaÂtions and their lands. Through the weight of his correspondence there develÂoped themes that would become cornerstones of imperial practice in relations with tribal peoples, their land and land titling in the white settlement colonies. His view that colonial courts and colonial legislatures should be excluded from this sphere was the consequence of their having by the self-interested pattern of their conduct excluded themselves. One sees here the germ of the â€?political trust' that what would become the predicate of imperial practice early the next century. 3