> From: Constantine Gutzman <krg2a@server1.mail.virginia.edu
>
> Subject: Adams as "monarchist"
> Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 09:50:36 -0500 ()
>
> I should add to my previous post concerning Jefferson's objections to
the
> Virginia constitution of 1776 that he noted theoretical objections to
the
> Virginia Senate seemingly in consonance with Adams' views. Jefferson
said
> the Senate was objectionable as it stood because since it was drawn
from
> the same people on the same basis, Virginians did not obtain the
benefits
> of bicameralism: two houses representing different
principles/cohorts.
> This sounds precisely like a desire to insure that the many be
counterposed
> to the few.
John Adams advocated a senate to protect an aristocracy of wealth and property from democratic rule. His draft of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1779 accomplished this. (Samuel Eliot Morrison wrote, "The Senate of Massacusetts was created in order to protect property against democracy.")
Jefferson had no such idea. Jefferson opposed property qualifications for voters. In 1800, he wrote from Virginia, "When the constitution of Virginia was formed, I was in attendance at Congress. Had I been here, I should probably have proposed a general suffrage... I may further say that I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches..." (TJ to Jeremiah Moor, Monticello, Aug. 14, 1800). Cf. Madison's report of Franklin's argument against property qualifications: "Some of the great rogues he was ever acquainted with were the richest rogues." (Aug 10, 1787 at federal Constitutional Convention).
Jefferson's flirted with the idea of bi-cameralism in his third draft of the Virginia Constitution, apparently to check the preciptancy of a single chamber, but not as an aristocratic hedge. Jefferson's second chamber would have been chosen by the first and thus ultimately serve an identical franchise.
As I indicated in another SHEAR message, my book American Aurora contains some reportage that, by the time of John Adams' presidency, Thomas Jefferson had come to favor unicameralism. I also suggest in American Aurora that one might choose to distinguish the bi-cameralism of those concerned with the possible precipitancy of a single-chamber legislature from the bi-cameralism of those (like John Adams) who wanted a second chamber protect a propertied aristocracy.
Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
[Richard Bernstein wrote:]
> Furthermore: The entire course of Jefferson's constitutional thought,
as
> adumbrated most recently by David Mayer in THE CONSTITUTIONAL THOUGHT
OF
> THOMAS JEFFERSON (Univ. of Virginia Press, 1994), shows that
Jefferson
> always envisaged a legislature as being bicameral, and always insisted on
a
> vigorous executive; he consistently promoted his objections to the
1776
> Virginia constitution at the time it was framed and adopted, in his
NOTES
> ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (published London 1787), and as late as his
1816
> letters to Samuel Kercheval. His preferred design for a
republican
> constitution resembles that offered by John Adams in his 1776
pamphlet
> THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT.
The problem with this statement lies in deciding which Jefferson is meant. Is it the Jefferson who wanted a 9-year term for the Virginia Senate with no possibility of reelection? The Jefferson who wanted indirect election of Virginia senators in order to have Virginia partake of the advantage of having its plural houses of legislature drawn from different social groups and selected on different principles? The Jefferson who supported reconstitution of the Virginia Council, or the ex-governor who supported its virtual abolition? Or the Jefferson who wrote, 40 years later, that government was more republican as it more closely approximated the preferences of the citizenry?
One who compares Jefferson's writings on the Virginia constitution of 1776 in the decade after its adoption to his writings on that same constitution in the period after his retirement from the presidency will find jarring differences between the two. Indeed, a student with more time will find that Jefferson's views concerning desirable amendments to that document were always in flux.
K.R. Constantine Gutzman
Dept. of History
University of Virginia
(804)293-5963
Just one more attempt (I too would hope).
"I assert also that an examination of col. John Taylor, of Caroline in Virginia, and of Colo. John Langdon, of New Hampshire, will prove that Mr. Adams made, in their hearing before 1797, the declaration that he expected or hoped to see the time...that the people of the United States would not be happy without an hereditary chief magistrate and a senate that should be hereditary or for life..." Tench Coxe, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, October 5, 1800
"Mr. Adams certainly expressed himself... [t]hat he hoped or expected to see the day when Mr. Taylor and his friend Mr. Giles would be convinced that the people of the United States would not be happy without an hereditary Chief Magistrate and Senate or at least during life..." U.S. Senator John Langdon, Porsmouth, October 9, 1800
"Decidedly sometime after he became Vice President, Adams concluded that the United States would have to adopt a hereditary legislature and a monarch." Peter Shaw, "The Character of John Adams" (Univ. of N.C. Press, 1976), 231.
I really don't think it's a word game.
Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Richard Rosenfeld is hard to convince. He writes: "John Adams did not favor a balance between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy to protect democracy." as if that were to refute the assertion that Adams wanted to protect a republican system. Democracy is a good thing in my view, but not in Adams's. Indeed the only prominent Founders I find who liked democracy are young Paine and old Franklin. In the 1790s, democracy is not necessarily republic and republic is not necessarily democracy. In the 1790s, even for radical democrats, a republic is a state without a singleton sovereign. Some of history's kingless states were and had been described as aristocracies. They, too, were republics; but they were not democracies -- not in the view of the ancients with whom all the classically educated Framers were conversant, and not in the view of the 18th century. It is interesting that Montesquieu in his 1748 _Spirit of the Laws foreshadowed by the earlier Persian Letters_, distinguished his understanding of "republic" from Bodin's by listing two of the three ancient forms of state (rule by few and by many) as republics but not the third (rule by one). It's in Part I:II:1 & 2, in the Oeuvres completes (Seuil), p. 532. In fact, this binary regrouping of the three forms of government can be found as far back as Machiavelli himself, but it was not until the 18th century that it became the dominant taxonomy in the west. Johnson's 1755 Dictionary gives "A republick; a government not monarchical" as the 9th definition of "State." Its definition of "Republic" is "A government of more than one." Its definition of "Republican" is as Rosenfeld cited it, with a quotation from Addison.
In a later post Richard Rosenfeld quotes Jefferson's 1816 letter to Taylor as a refutation of John Adams's vague definition of republic in 1798. ""[I]nstead of saying, as has been said, 'that it may mean anything or nothing,' we may say with truth and meaning that republican governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election or control in their composition.""
It's true that John Adams would not have agreed with Jefferson on that in 1816, but in 1789 he might have agreed with it in July or October, but disagreed in June. His hesitation with the voters of Rutland, Vermont (a hotbed of democracy) in 1798 is honest. He struggled all his life with the meaning of the word, "republic," and never quite left out the monarchical element of the old mixed government definition. Here's a sampling:
---------- begin Adams quotations ----------
"Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say it is a
limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly
known in the schools... And it is [the] reservation of fundamentals, of the
right of giving instructions, and of new elections, which creates a popular
check, upon the whole government which alone secures the constitution from
becoming an aristocracy, or a mixture of monarchy and aristocracy
only."(Boston Gazette, 27Jan1766, Adams Papers, V I, pp 167-168)
"If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." (Novanglus, in Boston Gazette, 6Mar1775, Adams Papers, V II, p. 314)
"no good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'" (Adams, "Thoughts on Government" January, 1776)
"The truth is that neither then nor at any former time, since I had attained my maturity in Age, Reading and reflection had I imbibed any general Prejudice against Kings, or in favour of them. It appeared to me then as it has done ever since, that there is a State of Society in which a Republican Government is the best, and in America the only one..." (Adams, Diary & Autobiography, 6 May, 1778, IV, 91)
"Among every people and in every species of republics, we have constantly found a first magistrate, a head, a chief, under various denominations, indeed, and with different degrees of authority..." (Adams, _Defence of the Constitutions..._ (1787) in Works, IV, 358-60, 579, 462, 474, V:108, VI:108)
"if it is heresy, I shall, I suppose, be cast out of communion. But it is the only sense in which I am or ever was a Republican, and in such times I hold the concealment of sentiments to be no better than countenancing sedition." (Adams to Franklin with copy of Defence, 27 Jan, 1787 in Works of BF, ed. Bigelow, NY, 1904, XI, 298-99)
"The doctrine of *imperium in imperio* is a solecism, a contradiction in terms [...] not a confederation of independent Republicks [...] a monarchical republic [...] I find that I... shall soon be pronounced *hostis republicani generis*." (Adams to James Lovell, 4 June, 1789 in Adams Papers Microfilm, Reel 115 and Works, VIII, p. 493)
"In the first place, what is your definition of republic? Mine is this: A government whose sovereignty is vested in more than one person." (Adams to Sherman 17 July, 1789 in Works VI:428)
"All good government is and must be republican. But at the same time, you can or will agree with me, that there is not in lexicography a more fraudulent word... Are we not, my friend, in danger of rendering the word republican unpopular in this country by an indiscreet, indeterminate, and equivocal use of it? [...] Whenever I use the word republic with approbation, I mean a government in which the people have collectively, or by representation, an essential share in the sovereignty... the republican forms in Poland and Venice are much worse, and those of Holland and Bern very little better, than the monarchical form in France before the late revolution." (Adams to Sam Adams, 18 Oct, 1789 in Works, VI:415,420-421)
"[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will." (Adams to Mercy Warren, 20July, 1807, in MHS Collections 5th ser. IV, 1878)
---------- end Adams quotations -------------
I apologize that I may have become as tiresome on this subject as Adams
himself became, but the misunderstanding I'm trying to correct is very old
in American historiography and has often made it seem excessively parochial
to non-Americans.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
> >Bill Everdell writes:
> >
> >> Richard Rosenfeld is hard to convince. He writes: "John
Adams did not
> >> favor a balance between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy
to protect
> >> democracy." as if that were to refute the assertion that
Adams wanted to
> >> protect a republican system.
I think Bill Everdell has shifted gears again. I was not attempting to refute (and Bill Everdell had not made) "the assertion that Adams wanted to protect a republican system." I was responding to (as I quoted) Bill Everdell's concurrence that Adams' arguments for balance (between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy) were "more concerned about explaining the necessity of an aristocracy than of a monarchy" and Bill Everdell's proposed conclusion that, in Adams' and everyone's view in the 1790s, "this balance is required in order to prevent rule by one person -- monarchy..."
I did not argue - nor would I - that John Adams did not see himself as a "republican" (as Adams redefined the term from time to time, generally to defend against claims he wasn't one). Nor would I argue that he didn't see his "proposed balance" as a "republican system."
Adams made himself perfectly clear, when Benjaimin Rush questioned Adams' republicanism:
"You seem determined not to allow a limited monarchy to be a republican system, which it certainly is, and the best that has ever been tryed..."
JA to Benjamin Rush, June 19, 1789
Democrats in 1776 and Democratic-Republicans in the 1790's did not agree with Adams' view. And, contrary to the popular view, democrats were not rarities, even in 1776.
I take heart from the words of Alexis de Toqueville:
"The party that desired to limit the power of the people, endeavored to apply its doctrines more especially to the Constitution of the Union, whence it derived its name of Federal. The other party, which affected to be exclusively attached to the cause of liberty, took that of Republican. America is the land of democracy, and the Federalists, therefore, were always in a minority... The means by which the Federalists had maintained their position were artificial, and their resources were temporary..." (Democracy in America, Chap. X)
Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts