Arbitrary Power: The Definition of Tyranny

By: Michael Boldin

 

“The curse and scandal of human nature.”

That’s how James Otis, Jr. described arbitrary power. It wasn’t just a sign of tyranny, or a step toward it. It was the very definition of tyranny.

It is power without right.

And that principle pervades the Declaration of Independence.

But this wasn’t a new idea born of the American Revolution. The principle stretches back thousands of years and became the driving force behind written constitutions.

The Founders didn’t just fear arbitrary power or fight against it. They defined it. And they warned us: it leads to tyranny, every single time.

WHAT IS ARBITRARY POWER?

James Otis Jr. defined it this way in 1762:

“arbitrary; which in plain English means no more than to do as one pleases.”

The principle carried forward to the Constitution itself. “Lighthorse” Harry Lee made the standard clear: if a power exercised isn’t enumerated, it’s arbitrary and unconstitutional.

“When a question arises with respect to the legality of any power, exercised or assumed by Congress, it is plain on the side of the governed. Is it enumerated in the Constitution? If it be, it is legal and just. It is otherwise arbitrary and unconstitutional.”

So any time government acts beyond the limits of a constitution, it is arbitrary. It is lawless.

To Otis, arbitrary power wasn’t just dangerous. It was vile. It was corrupt.

“the curse and scandal of human nature”

The old revolutionaries considered arbitrary power the very definition of tyranny.

Otis was calling the British out for violating their own system – the long-standing, unwritten British constitution. Instead of honoring it, they were ruling by arbitrary power.

“a greater difference on this side the Grave cannot be found, than that which subsists between British subjects, and the slaves of tyranny.”

A LONG-STANDING FOUNDATION

The principle of opposing arbitrary power long predated the American Revolution. The Founders didn’t create the idea that arbitrary power is tyranny. They carried it forward.

From the ancient world to the Enlightenment to the revolutionary press of the 1700s, the warnings came through loud and clear.

Aristotle, writing in the 4th century BC, described the essence of tyranny in The Politics, Book V – as rendered by Benjamin Jowett in his 1885 translation:

“the true or typical form of tyranny is the arbitrary power of an individual crushing everybody alike, and governing only for his own advantage and against the will of his subjects, – a government which is detestable to freemen.”

John Locke, writing nearly two thousand years after Aristotle in his Second Treatise of Government, drew the same line between lawful rule and power without limits.

“Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government.”

In 1722, Thomas Gordon made the same point in Cato’s Letters. In a world ruled by arbitrary decrees, law itself becomes a joke.

“Thus in arbitrary countries, a law aged two days is an old law; and no law is suffered to be a standing law, but such as are found by long experience to be so very bad, and so thoroughly destructive, that human malice, and all the arts of a tyrant’s court, cannot make them worse.”

When power has no real limit but human nature itself, the result isn’t just bad laws. It becomes a race to the bottom, with each arbitrary decree more oppressive, more abusive, more destructive than the last.

By the time the Revolution reached the colonies, this wasn’t a radical idea. It was the foundation.

LIGHTING THE FUSE

This wasn’t just a legal theory. It was a direct challenge to power.

James Otis Jr. brought that principle to the front lines in 1761, during his fiery speech against the Writs of Assistance.

“It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book.”

That was the line in the sand. Otis made a connection no one could ignore: if a law violates the constitution, it isn’t law at all.

“An act against the constitution is void.”

This wasn’t a policy debate. It was direct opposition to raw, lawless power.

As John Adams later wrote, this speech was the moment the American Revolution truly began.

“Otis was a flame of fire… American Independence was then & there born”

In that speech, Otis articulated the foundational idea that would define the radical principles of the American Revolution over the next fifteen years: that arbitrary power is tyranny, and should be treated as void from the moment it appears.

“Then and there was the first scene of the first Act of opposition to the Arbitrary claims of Great Britain.”

SPREADING THE PRINCIPLE

This rejection of arbitrary power didn’t begin or end with James Otis Jr. or the people of Boston. It echoed across the continent in speeches, resolutions, and revolutionary writings.

In October 1774, delegates from twelve colonies met in Philadelphia and unanimously passed the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress.

“The good people of the several colonies… justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of parliament and administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies to meet… in order to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted.”

In their own words, arbitrary power was the reason the First Continental Congress even existed. The following week, they made it even more explicit – unanimously passing John Jay’s Address to the People of Great Britain.

“That we think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a Religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of Government in any quarter of the globe. These rights we, as well as you, deem sacred; and yet, sacred as they are, they have, with many others, been repeatedly and flagrantly violated.”

Just weeks before the first shots at Lexington and Concord, Joseph Warren delivered one of the strongest public condemnations of arbitrary power in his 1775 Massacre Day Oration.

“Savages, and death with torture were far less terrible than slavery: nothing was so much the object of their abhorrence as a tyrant’s power: they knew that it was more safe to dwell with man in his most unpolished state, -than in a country where arbitrary power prevails.”

Warren wasn’t just condemning tyranny. He was rejecting one of the most widely accepted justifications for government itself – that without it, there would be nothing but chaos. He turned that claim on its head. The people who settled America, he said, would rather live under no government at all – than live under a system of arbitrary power.

This wasn’t just passionate rhetoric. It was principle, a line in the sand. And no one stated that principle more clearly than Samuel Adams.

“The legislative has no right to absolute arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people.”

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Most people call the list of charges against the king in the Declaration of Independence “grievances,” but that word isn’t even in the document.

What is?

“A long train of abuses and usurpations.”

And:

“A history of repeated injuries and usurpations.”

This wasn’t a protest against bad leadership or temporary abuses. It was an indictment of a deliberate, calculated system – a government built on arbitrary power and nothing else.

In his rough draft, Jefferson didn’t leave anything open to interpretation.

“But when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government”

Benjamin Franklin suggested a change – from “arbitrary power” to “absolute Despotism.” But the underlying principle didn’t change at all.

Jefferson made the standard clear: not every usurpation, not every exercise of arbitrary power is enough to justify throwing off a government.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;”

They weren’t calling for revolt over every act of overreach. They were warning what to do when that overreach becomes the design, when it becomes the system.

And when that happens?

“It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

By the time Thomas Paine picked up his pen in The Crisis No. III, the war was in full swing. But the principle hadn’t changed. They were still fighting arbitrary power.

Paine was pointing back to the Declaratory Act of 1766, where Parliament claimed unlimited power over the colonies.

“One of the greatest degrees of sentimental union which America ever knew, was in denying the right of the British parliament ‘to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.’”

That kind of total authority – to rule in all cases whatsoever – was, to Paine, the worst and most expansive possible claim of arbitrary power in history.

“The Declaration is, in its form, an almighty one, and is the loftiest stretch of arbitrary power that ever one set of men or one country claimed over another.”

ARBITRARY POWER CREATES PRECEDENT

The Founders and old revolutionaries understood exactly where arbitrary power leads.

More arbitrary power.

John Dickinson put it this way in 1767:

“When an act injurious to freedom has once been done and the people bear it, the repetition of it is more likely to meet with submission.”

It wasn’t about scale or intention. It was about precedent.

Once power is exercised without right, and accepted, that becomes the new normal. And that new normal creates a cycle that repeats the same problem and expands power even further.

They learned that even the best system would eventually turn to tyranny without fixed boundaries. Locke put it this way.

“The legislative, or supreme authority, cannot assume to its self a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges”

James Harrington captured the same principle in one famous line:

“A government of laws, and not of men”

For the old revolutionaries, that wasn’t just theory. It was a line in the sand. And by 1768, Samuel Adams and James Otis made it clear – rules for government aren’t malleable.

“In all free states the constitution is fixed, and as the supreme legislative derives its power and authority from the constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation”

THE RISE OF WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS

For the founding generation, arbitrary power wasn’t just something to oppose solely in the moment. It was something to guard against before it ever took hold.

Writing constitutions was one way they responded to that threat. St. George Tucker explained that it was the Revolution that led to written constitutions.

“The American revolution seems to have given birth to this new political phenomenon: in every state a written constitution was framed, and adopted by the people, both in their individual and sovereign capacity, and character.”

Tucker gave several reasons why they did this. First, to make clear that government is just an agent of the people.

“By this means, the just distinction between the sovereignty, and the government, was rendered familiar to every intelligent mind; the former was found to reside in the people, and to be unalienable from them; the latter in their servants and agents:”

Next, to make sure the limits of government were known and fixed.

“by this means, also, government was reduced to its elements; its object was defined, its principles ascertained; its powers limited, and fixed; its structure organized”

Because without a constitution, power always moves in the same direction – total power.

“The advantages of a written constitution, considered as the original contract of society must immediately strike every reflecting mind; power, when undefined, soon becomes unlimited”

And because of that, written constitutions served another critical role: warning the people when arbitrary power had taken hold.

“A written constitution has moreover the peculiar advantage of serving as a beacon to apprise the people when their rights and liberties are invaded, or in danger.”

Thomas Jefferson tied it all together in 1791. Acts outside the Constitution aren’t just mistakes. They are usurpations. They are arbitrary power.

And when tolerated, arbitrary power creates precedent – for more arbitrary power. This, he warned, leads straight to unlimited power, total tyranny.

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the U.S. by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people’. To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

A RULE FOR SURVIVAL

Luther Martin tied the entire principle back to where it all began – the American Revolution.

“By the principles of the American revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted”

That wasn’t just theory. It was a call to action. Mercy Otis Warren made it even more direct. She gave us a rule for survival:

“Resist the first approaches of tyranny.”

If you want to protect and support liberty, you can’t wait until it feels like tyranny. You can’t wait until the tyranny is obvious. Because by then, you’ve probably already lost.

If power is not authorized, it is arbitrary. And that is the system the Founders fought a long, bloody war to secede from.

Not one step beyond the Constitution. Not one exception. Not one “emergency” power. Because all arbitrary power is tyranny – no matter who wields it and no matter what reason they give for it.

It must also be rejected and resisted by the people if liberty is to survive.

Not next year, or next month. Not next week. Today, not tomorrow. Right now.