Federalist Papers I

the lecture is Professor Thomas L pengal professor pengal holds the Joe our lawn chair in democratic studies in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin professor pengal received his BA from Cornell University and his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at the University of Texas professor pengal taught at Yale University Dartmouth University the University of Chicago and the Ecole de Zoet etude own science ocl in Paris he is the author of numerous works on political thought including the spirit of modern republicanism the moral vision of the American founders and the philosophy of lock the ennobling of democracy the challenge of the postmodern age and Leo Strauss an introduction to his thought and intellectual legacy he also serves on the editorial boards a political research quarterly and Polus the Journal of the Society for Greek political thought he has the recipient of various awards and accolades including four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Robert Foster Cherry great teacher of the world prize from Baylor University he has given several lectures including the X on lectures in humane approaches to the social sciences and the Verner Heisenberg memorial lecture at the carl friedrich von siemens foundation in munich professor pengal prepared the course guide book that comes with these lectures the course guidebook includes a detailed outline of each lecture a timeline a glossary biographical notes and a bibliography to get the most out of this course you may find it useful to follow along with the outlines or review them before or after each lecture my goal in this course is to illuminate the deepest original foundations of our American constitutional republicanism and to do so by bringing back to life the great controversy out of which our Constitution was born so that we ourselves can begin to reenact in some degree the debates and thus the choices and more importantly the arguments for the choices that were made by the founding generation we won't be looking mainly at arguments over details of the Constitution but rather at what I call the great debate between two fundamentally conflicting visions of what a healthy republic and healthy Republican civic life should be our focus is going to be on this most profound level of the disagreement and debate between those who favored and those who opposed the new constitution and we're going to learn that while of course those who favored the Constitution won out and therefore have made the greatest contribution to our political history and culture it's nevertheless true that those who oppose the Constitution and lost also have contributed to an ongoing dialogue and fertile self-criticism that has helped to define and enrich the American political tradition in other words by studying the great original debate over the Constitution we're going to become much more aware of a profound and fruitful set of tensions that lies at the heart of the American political experience and this spotlights the deepest reason why it is so important that we ourselves reenact this old controversy we Americans live within a cultural horizon in which our constitutional system is largely taken for granted as good and reasonable and this is a healthy thing for our political life because this means that we have a deep and broad consensus on basic principles and such consensus provides the stability and the trustee agreement among the citizens that's necessary for a republic to function well but for this political good we pay a serious price in terms of our genuine intellectual freedom because this consensus means that we're not usually challenged by deep criticism of our constitutional order as a whole and we're not thus impelled to rethink for and by ourselves the arguments for the basic principles and goals of our system and that puts us in danger of becoming the passive or unquestioning and hence somewhat unthinking creatures of our system we're not sufficiently aware of the deep questions or serious doubts that thoughtful people can raise about the basic principles underlying our constitutional system and we're not sufficiently aware that such deep questions and serious doubts were raised among the founders and that the meaning of our Constitution with its far-reaching implications was originally thought through and articulated and elaborated in response to such serious challenges we tend not to realize how much our constitutional thinking was forged in and through controversy and thus in an important sense draws its intellectual strength from controversy and even invites or stimulates controversy in the light of the original great debate out of which the fundamental meaning of the Constitution was forged by reenacting the debate at the founding we can begin to acquire an awareness of all this and thus liberate our minds we can recover a perspective from which we can see the system coming into being in and through the eyes of thoughtful proponents and opponents who did not because they could not take the system and it's basic principles and goals for granted by listening to the original critics of the Constitution and by seeing how the defenders are responding to those critics will have better access to the age-old deeply puzzling problems in the very nature of republicanism with which our founders were wrestling and trying to solve we can see precisely what dangers this new constitution was meant to combat and what it was destined to it but it was designed to achieve but also an equally important we can see what our constitutional system was not designed to achieve what alternative concerns and goals of political life were abandoned or subordinated what costs were consciously paid what limitations were accepted in opting for this at the time new system but all this means that we have to make the effort to try to understand the debate as it was understood at the time by the most articulate advocates on each side and to help achieve this I am going to quote profusely from the original documents from the original writings and speeches so that we can hear the very words of the contestants and learn to formulate the issues as they formulated them listening to and judging between them from the inside as it were now let me start by sketching the immediate historical situation that these writings which were going to study emerged out of and primarily addressed the first American Constitution was created during the Revolutionary War entitled the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union this established what the document calls in article three a confederacy or league of friendship among the ten states each of which explicitly retained what the document calls its sovereignty freedom and independence in the wording of article two in other words under this first Constitution the United States was or were and in those days everyone used the plural which is significant the United States were exactly what the name United States really connotes if you step back and think about it it wasn't one consolidated country but instead a permanent alliance or union of thirteen distinct but kindred independent states something more like what we see in today's European Union and accordingly under this first Constitution many are most of the important activities of government were carried out by the individual member states ruling over their own populations the central or federal government was both simple and very limited in its scope and powers it consisted of only one major institution a single Congress there was no judiciary whatsoever no separate executive at this Congress each state had a delegation that could have as many people in it as they wished but that cast only a single equal vote and most important matters required a supermajority of nine of these state votes this Congress dealt mainly with four kinds of business first and foremost collective foreign policy and defense but with practically no Union army the military consisted almost entirely of the state militias which could be requisitioned by the central government for limited time periods secondly the Congress also arbitrated disputes between states and thirdly it facilitated interstate as well as foreign commerce and then finally the Congress was empowered to legislate for the territories now especially during the three years after the war ended and we must never forget that it was this Constitution that led the country to victory in the revolution so it had behind it a momentous achievement but in the three years after the Revolution this Confederate system came to appear - more and more Americans as increasingly inadequate in matters of defense the Confederation seemed too weak in foreign affairs irresolute and lacking in a unified voice in domestic affairs especially regarding finance and the economy the Confederation seemed fragmented and irresponsible as regards payment of the government debts left over from the Revolution and most worrisome of all was what was beginning to appear within the states namely a fierce outbreak of rapidly partisan politics which exhibited an ominous combination of opposite but mutually reinforcing bad proclivities on the one hand the radical Democratic tendencies of the revolution had bred a widespread popular distrust of government and this distrust was being whipped up by demagogic populist leaders who branded the elected legislators as elitist and oligarchic a charge that took hold especially among those who felt that they were not sharing in the economic boom that occurred at the end of the Revolutionary War and that meant especially small farmers who were heavily burdened by debt as a result there were strong movements to limit the power of elected state legislators especially by requiring the elected representatives to follow strict instructions set out by the majority of the voters during the time of the election but still worse there were also incidents of mob rebellion against the laws most frightening of all in the fall and winter of 1786 there was shays in western Massachusetts which was an insurrection by small farmers angered by what they regarded as crushing debt and taxes that had to be forcibly put down by the state militia on the other hand in states where the populist forces did obtain control of the legislature laws were passed that threatened property rights and sound financial management sometimes buy outright confiscation and more often by impeding debt collection or instigating inflation by printing masses of paper money the degree of the problems was debated at the time and has continued to be debated by historians studying the period but many thoughtful people spoke of a growing crisis and under the leadership that included James Madison and Alexander Hamilton especially the federal Congress finally called a special convention to meet in Philadelphia in May of 1787 to which all the states were invited to send delegations and which was authorized to propose changes or amendments in the Articles of Confederation now this convention met through the entire summer of 1787 in secrecy and naturally while the secrecy of the proceedings allowed for a franker and freer debate an exchange of views it also aroused a good deal of suspicion amongst the populace outside who awaited the outcome and when the product was finally disclosed on September 17 1787 there was amongst much of the populace a kind of collective gasp because the rumors were confirmed the convention had not abided by its legally assigned task which was to repeat to propose amendments to the existing Constitution instead the convention had gone far beyond its delegated mission and had come forth with a entire new different unprecedented constitution little wonder that opposition exploded almost immediately what the convention did in effect was to appeal over the head of the existing Constitution and national government or federal government to the people themselves and over the heads of the state governments to the people in the states as the ultimate fountain of all constitutional authority the proposed Constitution was not sent back or referred back to the existing Congress or federal government it was not offered to them for their ratification or even for their discussion and it was not sent to the state governments for their ratification or their discussion instead the convention decided that their products should be ratified by special conventions in each state made up of delegates elected for that purpose directly by the people which meant at the time a majority of the adult male voters with eligibility requirements that varied from state to state and in addition the convention decided that ratification by any nine of the thirteen state conventions would be sufficient for the new constitution to come into effect for those ratifying states but as a practical matter everyone knew that if this new union was to have much chance of success the ratifying states had to include the four biggest states Pennsylvania Virginia Massachusetts and New York in the last three of which Virginia Massachusetts in New York there was very strong opposition especially in New York and the leaders of the opposition included some of the men who had themselves been delegates to the Constitutional Convention because this proposed new constitution was the compromise product of long and strenuous and sometimes dangerously bitter debate within that secret hall and the debates took place under some pretty trying circumstances which have been best described by one major historian Forrest McDonald in the following words an average close to 40 men most of them obese crowded into a modest-sized and not well ventilated room for five to seven hours a day during an intensely hot and muggy summer so it's not surprising that a sizable proportion of the delegates wound up refusing to sign the final document sixteen of the 55 who attended the Philadelphia Convention did not sign the document and among these non signers were some major figures who immediately began publishing their strong objections the delegation from Virginia the state which was the most populous wealthy and powerful at the time was badly split three of the Virginians including George Washington and James Madison signed on as supporters but in vehement opposition saying in fact that he would rather cut off his right hand then use it to sign this constitution was George Mason perhaps the second most respected Virginian of the time after George Washington Mason had authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 which was the first American Bill of Rights proceeding and influencing Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and also deeply influencing the declarations of Rights in other states joining Mason in opposition was Edmund Randolph the governor of Virginia the delegation from New York the second most populous and powerful state was even more opposed Alexander Hamilton was the only one of the three New York delegates who supported the Constitution his two colleagues Supreme Court Justice Robert Yates and Speaker of the assembly john lansing walked out of the convention early on in disgust at what was being concocted and Robert Yates is thought to be the author of one of the most insightful and well argued sets of essays attacking the proposed Constitution the essays that were signed by the pen name Brutus other distinguished delegates at the convention who came out in opposition included notably Luther Martin who was the Attorney General of Maryland and recognized as perhaps America's greatest expert on law and legal theory and John Francis Mercer of Maryland a distinguished lawyer a hero of the revolution who's probably the author of another of the best sets of oppositional writings which appeared under the pen-name a farmer and these non-signing delegates were joined by other weighty and eloquent writers and speakers in opposition many or most of whom wrote anonymously under pin names as was the custom at that time and because of this custom of noble anonymity in published political writings scholars to this day are uncertain to varying degrees as to who wrote as to what was the authorship of many or most of the anti-federalists writings these anti-federalists as the opponents of the Constitution were called or of course a diverse slot with a wide variety of objections and supporting arguments and they ranged in the degree of their opposition to the proposed Constitution some were for rejecting the whole scheme and starting all over again perhaps most preeminent among these was Governor George Clinton of New York supported by his allies Lansing and Yates who had been the delegates who walked out of the convention and they were joined by mercy Otis Warren perhaps the most gifted woman thinker poet playwright and historian of America at that time then there were other more moderate critics who called for substantial amendments to this proposed Constitution but prior to adoption at a second convention this was the position taken most eloquently by Patrick Henry who delivered a series of mighty orations against the proposed Constitution in the Virginia ratifying convention a similar position was taken in Virginia by Richard Henry Lee who'd been a leader of the revolution and who in 1786 was president of the Continental Congress and thus the leading official of the existing United States and Lee is we think perhaps the author of one of the most influential and widely read of the anti-federalists writings which were written under the title the letters from a federal farmer a third and softer opposition position called for substantial amendments but not requiring them prior to ratification amendments to be made by the first Congress this was the position taken in Massachusetts by those heroes of the revolution John Hancock who was in 1787 the governor of Massachusetts and Samuel Adams who was in 1787 president of the Massachusetts state Senate in the Massachusetts ratifying convention Hancock and Adams began by leaning strongly against ratification but eventually as the debates wore on they these two became leaders in striking a compromise which allowed a victory for ratification in the Massachusetts convention by a very close vote 187 to 168 but with the recommendation that major amendments be made by the first new Congress under the new constitutional system and this compromise form of ratifying saying yes to ratification but saying and there should be major changes and amendments made by the first Congress was followed by several other states it became a kind of paradigm of a way to get compromise ratification meanwhile on the other side the proponents of the Constitution who called themselves the Federalists were also a very lot and they too ranged in both the degree of their enthusiasm and the reasons for their support of the proposed Constitution but there's a massive twofold difference between the two sides in regard to their degree of unity first and most obviously the Federalists were more unified because they were all defending the same basic document the proposed Constitution while the anti-federalists had had no single unifying alternative proposal to unite them secondly the opponent's the anti-federalist never produced any single publication that ranks in depth and breadth with the great Federalist Papers that were written mainly by Hamilton and Madison which over time have come justifiably to obscure the numerous other writings and speeches that were published in 1787 in favor of the proposed Constitution now those supporting the proposed Constitution the Federalist took rhetorical advantage of the facts that their anti-federalists opponents were more scattered in their arguments and didn't have a single alternative plan to unite around the Federalists exploited this to portray their opponents as more incoherent more contradictory more lacking in any constructive vision than they in fact were and this is especially true of James Madison's treatment of his opponents in Federalist paper number 38 and for the first century and a half of our country's history scholars tended to be overly influenced by this rhetorical strategy of the victors and hence underestimated or ignored the strength of the anti-federalists arguments tall though everyone had to concede that the anti-federalists did make a great contribution in forcing upon the Federalists the amendments that form the bill of rights because as we shall see the idea of a national Bill of Rights was strongly resisted by the Federalists led by Hamilton and Madison at first they eventually agreed to the idea of a bill of rights only when they saw that they had to if they were going to win ratification and to avoid alienating from the new constitution that large minority who had opposed it in the great debate and it's a serious question that historians debate whether if there had been a national referendum the Constitution would have passed it's not at all clear that a majority of the Americans would have voted for it but apart from this grudging admission that the anti-federalists were chiefly responsible for the addition of a Bill of Rights leading 19th and early 20th century historians of the founding period such as John Fiske George Bancroft Andrew McLaughlin gave insufficient attention to the richness of the alternative Republican theory and vision that finds expression in the deepest reservations articulated in the best of the anti-federalists writings then later scholarship in the early and mid 20th century was blighted by the predominance of outlook on history that was championed by Charles beard who tended to reductively interpret the theorizing of both the Federalists and the anti-federalists as mere ideology masking and promoting the clash of selfish class economic interests historians of the past half century have been remedying this earlier neglect of the theoretical seriousness of anti-federalists as well as Federalist thinking and hence scholars have recent come more and more to appreciate better the weightiness and depth of the debate on both sides and a major goal of these lectures of mine is to profit from and to give expression to this more recent heightened appreciation of the principle power of the argumentation on both sides in the great debate now let's focus a little more narrowly in on New York State in its contest out of which Hamilton's and Madison's great Federalist Papers emerged in New York the opponents of the Constitution cease the early initiative governor clinton joined by his allies Yates and Lansing and mercy Warren published starting right away in September of 1787 some very powerful newspaper essays and pamphlets attacking the proposed Constitution and it was in response to this anti federalists onslaught that Alexander Hamilton decided he had to organize and lead the writing and publication of the Federalist Papers in newspapers so there's a deep sense in which it was the New York anti-federalists who provoked and made necessary unless possible the greatest commentary on the Constitution's underlying meaning Hamilton himself wrote about 2/3 of these famous Federalist Papers but he enlisted the help of James Madison who was visiting New York at the time and who wrote some of the most important papers and also John Jay who was later to become the first Chief Justice of the United States who unfortunately however was wounded and ended up writing only five of the 85 papers Hamilton was also the leading Pro ratification spokesman at the New York ratifying convention which met the next summer where there was an eventual Federalist victory by a very close vote of 30 to 27 on the very late date of July 26 1788 but this ratification like that in Massachusetts included a call for no less than 33 amendments to the Constitution to be enacted by the first Congress in Virginia which ratified in June the vote was not quite so close 89 to 79 but it also included a call for 20 amendments in addition to a Declaration of Rights and in New York it was only the arrival of the news of the Virginia ratification which took a month by horseback to get to New York which turned the tide it persuaded a handful of anti-federalist delegates led by Melanchthon Smith to switch sides from opposition to grudging acceptance an endorsement of ratification on the grounds that well if Virginia is going to be in this thing it would just be too dangerous for New York to stay out so seeing in their immediate context the Federalist Papers are a very high level political advocate of journalism a newspaper discussion as Hamilton calls them in paper 11 Hamilton and Madison don't claim to be writing a treatise or a work of true political philosophy instead they're arguing like good lawyers for a specific Constitution in a specific time and place against specific opponents and the opponents are these anti federalists who have published already and continue to publish their writings and this makes of course the Federalist Papers colored by a partisan debating spirit that's not always fair to the opponents and yet on the other hand Hamilton and Madison are keenly aware that any argument for a specific kind of government if it is to be cogent and convincing must give some well reasoned response to the most serious objections of the adversaries especially objections of a fundamental principle kind and in this case the opponents have raised grave doubts as to whether the proposed Constitution conforms to the basic traditional American principles of freedom and republicanism the anti-federalists charged from the beginning that this proposed constitution represented a dangerously innovating departure from great traditional Republican principles the principles that have been handed down for generations that Americans have heretofore made the foundation of their civic life the principles that carried us through the Revolution they said are being abandoned in this and by this document the anti-federalists thus tend to speak as conservatives decrying the reckless radicalism of the Federalists and their new constitution and the Federalists respond by in some measure proudly accepting the mantle of innovators in the next lecture I want to enter into the serious issues of the great debate by starting from this contrast and unpacking what is implied in this apparent conservatism of the anti-federalist and the apparent radicalism of the Federalist as we saw at the end of the last lecture a massive first impression we get is that the anti-federalists or opponents of the proposed Constitution speak as conservatives whereas the Federalist or defenders of the proposed Constitution speak as innovators this is true most immediately and obviously in that the anti-federalists argue that there's no need for a completely new Constitution to replace the existing Constitution though they readily acknowledge that the Articles of Confederation do need some substantial revision the anti-federalists call for some enhancement of the powers of the central government under the Articles but they insist the basic idea of the existing Constitution its underlying truly federal principles are essentially fine embodying a properly limited idea of the central government's powers maintaining a true balance of power between the central and the state governments and among the state governments and this limitation and balancing of powers they charge was lost sight of in the proposed Constitution as the anti-federalists speaker Gilbert Livingston said in the debates in the New York ratifying convention true it is Sir there are some powers wanted to make this glorious compact complete but Sir let us be cautious that we do not err more on the other hand by giving power to profusely when perhaps it will be too late to recall it and the Pennsylvania writer who calls himself a federal Republican commenting on the clause in the proposed Constitution which gives to Congress the power to as our document says levy and raises taxes to provide for the common defense and general welfare says our situation taught us the necessity of enlarging the powers of Congress for certain national purposes where the deficiency was experienced had these and these only then added experience itself would have been an advocate for the measure but in the proposed Constitution there is an extent of power in Congress of which I fear neither theory nor practice will events the propriety or advantage the Federalists in contrast stand for abandoning the existing Constitution and its basic federal principles in order to substitute something dramatically different and unprecedented in the words of Hamilton in Federalist paper 23 there is an absolute necessity for an entire change in the first principles of the system against this kind of thinking the anti-federalists tend to argue that the chief source of the present troubles is not mainly the bad design of the existing Constitution but rather a decline in civic and moral spirit among the American people in the years since the Revolution thus Samuel Adams or a follower of his perhaps writing under the pen name Candida s' says we are too apt to charge misfortunes to the one of energy in our government misfortunes which we have brought upon ourselves by dissipation and extravagance and the anti-federalists see the proposed Constitution as doing little to remedy this more important moral decline among the people and likely to make things worse and this anti federalists stress on the importance of civic virtue in the populist signals the more profound level of the conservative stance of the anti-federalist they charge that the proposed Constitution is too great a departure from age-old classical principles of republican government and in reply to this charge the federalists show themselves to be proud radicals in that they proudly acknowledge that their proposed republic is of a dramatically new kind without precedent in human history what's more Madison and his allies dare to argue that precisely the innovativeness of the proposed constitutional republic is a good argument for it because this signals the fact that this new type of republic will not have the vices that have always before haunted republican governments in all previous times and places as Madison puts it in paper 37 when he's beginning to give an overview of the whole new proposal the novelty of the undertaking immediately strikes us it has been shown in the course of these papers that the other confederacies which could be consulted as precedents have been vitiated by erroneous principles and can therefore furnish no other light than that of beacons which give warning of the course to be shunned without pointing out that which ought to be pursued and it's this aspect of the proposed constitution its departure from major traditional agreed on principles of republicanism that I want to focus on first and foremost because this will bring into focus what are the deepest issues in the great debate issues concerning the very nature of sound republicanism Republican liberty and self-government a good starting point is what we see leaping out at us from the start of Hamilton's ninth Federalist paper for there we find an unabashed and sweeping condemnation of the great examples and principles of classical republicanism that heroically virtuous form of self-government that had characterized the greco-roman world in its best and most famous moments it is impossible Hamilton writes to read the history of the petit republics of Greece Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and Anarchy if momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliance they at the same time admonish us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction and tarnish the luster of those bright talents and exalted endowments for which the favored soil that produced them have been so justly celebrated if it had been found impracticable Hamilton goes on to have devised models of a more perfect structure than those ancient Greek and Roman Republic's the enlightened friends to Liberty would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of government as indefensible now this severe attack on the classical Republican tradition is continued by Madison in the next tenth paper and carried still further by both Madison and Hamilton in papers 16 through 20 as well as elsewhere and to grasp the bold character of this attack on the classical tradition we have to recognize the awesome significance for everyone at the time of the founding of classical republicanism among Americans as well as Europeans in the 18th century the most authoritative model of republicanism in previous history was the greco-roman experience of self-government whose legacy had often been a vote during the Revolution as a source of inspiration and guidance thus for example in the depths of the terrible winter at Valley Forge George Washington had rallied morale by having Addison's great tragedy of the Roman hero Cato presented to the starving freezing troops and throughout his life Washington spoke of deep inspiration by the roman republican models of heroic leadership a washington was by no means exceptional in this and almost everyone in the 18th century especially in america agreed that there had been a flowering of republican self-government and civic virtue in classical antiquity a flowering which loomed as a kind of heroic standard for all succeeding ages and the continuing weight of this classical republican heritage is seen throughout the federalist papers by virtue of the fact that the authors sign every paper Publius invoking over and over and over 85 times the name of one of the two leading founders of the Roman Republic Publius Valerius public ola a hero celebrated in one of two talks famous biographies and this kind of noble anonymity submerging oneself as an author behind a pen name taken from some classical Republican figure was very common practice among both Federalists and anti-federalists and as we proceed we'll be quoting repeatedly papers and essays signed by pen names such as Brutus Cato Candida Sentinel Cincinnatus Cornelius and so forth yet even while Hamilton and Madison embraced this common practice and thus signaled that they do share to some extent in the common respect for the classical Republican tradition they soon unveil and as we have now seen from paper number nine their radical break with that tradition and thus provoke some of the anti-federalists deepest worries about the proposed new constitution system and to understand all that is at stake in this Federalist break with classical republicanism and the deep worries this break arouses in the anti-federalists we have to familiarize ourselves with what was the rich and complex meaning for Americans in the 18th century of this classical Republican tradition the original understanding of classical republicanism was available to the Americans through the great classics of ancient political theory written by philosophers such as Aristotle and Cicero and through the great classics of ancient history such as the works of Thucydides and Plutarch and Livy but as Hamilton reminds us in the same ninth Federalist paper from which I read a moment ago the classical Republican tradition had been given its most compelling recent formulation by the great French political philosopher Montesquieu in his masterpiece the spirit of the laws published in 1748 and immediately translated in English the spirit of the laws quickly became the most important work of political philosophy of the time and was the work of political philosophy that was the most frequently cited as an authority among Americans at the time of the founding now Montesquieu in his masterpiece didn't simply restate the classical Republican tradition in important ways he reinterprets that tradition he gives to the classical republican experience a new analysis and if we're to grasp the complexity of what the classical model meant for Americans at the founding we first need to understand precisely how Montesquieu's reinterpretation profoundly changes the meaning of the classical Republican models now what exactly then is the key difference between Montesquieu's reinterpretation reanalysis and the original analysis provided by the classical philosophers themselves of their world in its original form in the political theory elaborated in the writings of the great greco-roman political philosophers and historians Republican government had been understood more in aristocratic than in democratic terms republics at their best were understood to be shaped by and for and elite but not an elite defined by our aim that money or wealth instead an elite genuinely dedicated to wise and sometimes heroic civic virtue generously preoccupied with a politics of caring for the welfare of the whole community a welfare defined more in spiritual than in material terms and thus an elite which conceived of its highest task as that of leading the community in cultivating a refined life of the mind centered on public communal religious worship and celebration and reflection in great public religious festivals such as produced the Magnificent Greek in Latin tragedies and comedies this aristocracies economic basis was not commercial or business or banking but instead inherited farmland and farming property of a kind that affords leisure without tempting to acquisitiveness or materialistic love of money the life of virtue led by civic leaders was understood not only or even mainly as a life of service to the community to the people the supreme goal of politics was understood to be neither the promotion of the interests of the rich with their property and wealth nor the promotion of the ordinary person's desire for security and liberty and prosperity instead the exercise of the public and private virtues was conceived as itself the highest end purpose of the community the life of virtue civic and intellectual was held to be itself the peak of human flourishing and the purpose of the best Republican community yet as a practical matter the classical theorists recognized that in almost all actual situations this high and noble aspiration had to be compromised both in order to win the necessary support of the more materialistically minded commercial and business rich people and in order to gain the consent and support of the numerically powerful poor and middle classes in practice it was understood the concern for virtue or human excellence has to be diluted by concerns for wealth freedom and equality so the best practical sort of republic was conceived in this classical theory as what was called a mixed regime meaning a republic that mixes or combines aristocracy with some democracy by taking considerable power out of the hands of the moral elite and placing that power in the hands of the majority of the populace in the best version of this compromise mixed regime the few of distinguished virtue had to share power with the many ordinary people and govern with their consent but it was hoped without becoming the servants of the people in the mixed regime the great challenge to the moral elite was to resist or to try to elevate the ordinary people's tendency to debase virtue into something regarded not as the end but rather as a means a mere means to popular prosperity and liberty and security now in a Christianized version this original classical conception had been the dominant political outlook of the New England Puritans who were a cornerstone of the American Republic and tradition in a more secular version the classic mixed regime is articulated by Thomas Jefferson in a famous letter to John Adams written near the end of their lives where he speaks as follows I agree with you he writes to Adams that there is a natural aristocracy among men the grounds of this are virtue and talents there is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth without either virtue or talents the natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction the trust and government of society may we not even say he writes to Adams that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectual e for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government the artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy I think the best remedy is to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo aristoi of the wheat from the chaff in general they will elect the real good and wise now more to skew in contrast to all this had argued that the true virtues of the classical Republic's were more popular egalitarian mediocre as he put it Montesquieu contended against Aristotle and Cicero and Thucydides and Plutarch that the classical republic at its best was democratic rather than aristocratic at its best Montesquieu insisted the classical Republic puts supreme power in the hands of the Assembly of all the citizens meeting frequently to pass by majority vote the fundamental laws and to serve as mass popular juries in court trials and thus to control the judiciary and also to elect and later to pass judgment on administrative officers who were understood to be the people's public servants such a democracy Montesquieu pointed out must be small enough so that the people can assemble and more importantly small enough so that those who stand for election to office are familiar to and resemble and remain under the close scrutiny of the rest of the populace even more important than smallness of size Montesquieu stressed a true democracy requires in all its ordinary citizens an intense public spirit each and every citizen must be willing to devote considerable time and energy and expense to public service to long meetings to elaborate discussions to important committee work and so on and Montesquieu calls such virtue in the people the very principle as he puts it or the spring of democracy and Montesquieu explains that this democratic virtue requires among the citizens a deep spirit of kinship or fraternity and such genuine fraternity requires a homogeneity in the way of life of the inhabitants only persons he argues who share the same education the same family mores the same economic status the same religion can look upon one another with an authentic sense of brotherhood and sympathy and empathy so virtue he argues is the love of equality meaning the love of like-for-like the love of and for a society that prevents sharp class distinctions or pronounced diversity and achieve business of such a democratic community he argues is legislating this morality this moral meaning requiring through all sorts of social pressures including coercion and constant moral education of adults as well as children requiring all citizens to conform to the ethos of egalitarian communal civic virtue and this requires a single established religion uniting the society spiritually now the classical Republican ideal especially in its new Montesquieu Ian's Democratic version was held in high honor especially by the anti-federalists who appealed to key elements of this Montesquieu ium version of the classical ideal as a standard by which to judge and condemn the proposed Constitution and it's very unclassified version of Republican life but I must hasten to add the classical Republican ideal even in its newer more democratic Montesquieu Ian version was not simply or unreservedly embraced by almost anyone in America in 1787 including the anti-federalists and it's this deep ambivalence about the classical Republican ideal that makes the anti-federalists outlook so complicated sometimes to be sure leading anti-federalists do speak in very classical sounding terms as when the anti-federalists writer who calls himself Brutus says in his seventh essay we ought he says to furnish the world with an example of a great people who in their civil institutions hold chiefly and view the attainment of virtue and happiness among ourselves but it's more characteristic of the anti-federalists including Brutus himself to speak of the chief goal of government as being the securing of rights and liberties in an individualistic and even what we today might call libertarian sense meaning rights and liberties for individuals to pursue their own private happiness as each wishes especially through the acquisition of more and more private property through commerce as well as farming free from governmental or communal supervision and interference in other words the anti-federalists share with the Federalists a vision of America's future that would be unlike the classical ideal in that they envision the future country as being much larger in scale than any classical Republic much more commercial and economically growth oriented and much more individualistic liberal or even libertarian and yet the anti-federalists continue to think at the risk of some deep inconsistency that precisely in order to protect this more individualistic Liberty major aspects of the classical ideal need to be preserved and fostered aspects that would be abandoned or lost in the constitutional order proposed by the Federalists they fear but most deeply distinguishes the anti-federalists outlook from the classical Republican ideal in both its original and its new Montesquieu II inform is that the anti-federalists tend to see politics as less a positive good less an attractive field for moral fulfillment and more unnecessary evil required to protect the personal liberty of individuals who exercise their Liberty largely in more private pursuits especially the pursuit of economic gain what's more the anti-federalists are unclassified to see government and participation in politics as intrinsically dubious and even corrupting because they see humans as by nature very prone to use whatever power they have to seek more and more power power likely to be used to exercise exploitative control over others as the writer who calls himself John DeWitt puts it the more we examine the conduct of those men who have been entrusted with the administration of governments the more assured we shall be that mankind have perhaps in every instance abused the authority vested in them or attempted the abuse Brutus issues a similar judgment based he says on the lessons of the Old Testament but precisely on the basis of this unclassified is in politics and government the anti-federalists think that the classical ideas of the need for civic virtue in the populace amongst ordinary citizens and the need for direct popular participation in government and the need for government to be kept close to and dependent on the people under their direct local popular control are all essential to prevent what will otherwise be a steady drift toward oligarchy or aristocratic oppression by whatever elite hold the government offices as the writer who calls himself Sentinel puts it in his first letter a Republican or free government can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous and where property is pretty equally divided in such a government the people are the sovereign and their sense or opinion is the criterion of every public measure for when this ceases to be the case the nature of the government is changed and an aristocracy monarchy or despotism will rise on its ruin the anti-federalists are concerned then for the classical Republican ideals of citizen virtue and popular participation in and control over government not in the way the classics themselves were these virtues are not seen chiefly as good for their own sakes or as ends but instead mainly as means to as necessary protections and supports for more individualistic rights and freedoms freedoms of a largely non-political commercial and private kind so it's on this basis of a very qualified appeal to classical republicanism that the anti-federalists oppose the new constitution they're worried above all because they see the proposed Constitution as threatening individual rights and freedoms by excessively centralizing governmental power making it too unified and unchecked and by removing government too far from the direct local control of the people as citizens making the Constitution likely to foster an elite aristocratic government that would more and more intrude with domineering effect in people's lives with the people becoming more and more like servile servants rather than active independent power sharers what's needed instead in the anti-federalists view is maintaining a true Confederacy of smaller localized more classical and participatory democracies thus George Mason X postulates the very idea of converting what was formerly a confederation to a consolidated government is totally subversive of every principle which is hitherto governed us it is ascertained by history he says that there never was a government over a very extensive country without destroying the liberties of the people history also supported by the opinions of the best writers shows us that popular governments can only exist in small territories is there a single example he challenges the Federalists on the face of the earth to support a contrary opinion was there ever an instance of a general national government extending over so extensive a country abounding in such a variety of climates etc where the people retained their Liberty now in the next lecture I want to elaborate more fully the rather complex republican vision for America that the anti-federalists advocate showing more concretely exactly how the anti-federal draw upon and adapt and integrate key elements of the classical ideal and then I'll turn to begin laying out the federalists answer and response

Channel: Gregory Randolph

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Keywords: The Federalist Papers (Literary Series)

Id: _JhF2CTGNdE

Length: 66min 24sec (3984 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2013