If one accepts the premise that political tracts written by American lead-ers during the Revolutionary period can be taken at face value, then the ideol-ogy espoused by the Founding Fathers is crucial to understanding both theAmerican Revolution (1775-1783) and the genesis of the United States.However, arriving at a collective understanding of the Founders' political prin-ciples is difficult, considering the conflicting paradigms historians and politicalscientists have offered to explain the intellectual background of the foundingof America.

Until the mid 1960s, scholars asserted that America's intellectual fountain-head derived from a liberal tradition that can be traced back to the writings ofEnglish philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, Scottish economistAdam Smith, and French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu. Mod-ern liberalism is the belief that the purpose of government is to maximize indi-vidual freedom. The best means to this end is through a minimal governmentthat is based upon the doctrines of popular sovereignty and the people's rightto rebel. Additionally, enlightened political philosophers argued that a com-mercial economy advances and protects individual rights and freedoms moreso than an agrarian one. Behind their ideology is a positive view of humannature and a distrust of government. This liberal political philosophy isreflected in all the important early U.S. national texts: the Declaration of Inde-pendence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1781), and Constitution of theUnited States (1787).

In the mid 1960s a group of historians sought to dethrone the para-digm that focused on modern liberalism and to replace it with one thatlooked to the ideology of classical republicanism or civic humanism, a tra-dition of political philosophy with roots in classical, Renaissance, andEnlightenment political writings. The central tenet of civic humanism is thatone will find greater fulfillment in advancing the welfare of the communitythan one's own self-interest. Being actively engaged in the community(and the political process) is critical because an underlying assumption incivic humanism is that those in power are always trying to augment theirauthority at the expense of people's liberties. This political language,according to proponents of the new paradigm, provides an important win-dow into understanding the origins of the American Revolution and thecreation of the republic. To American leaders in the 1760s and early1770s, these scholars argued, classical republicanism explained the per-118

FOUNDING FATHERS

Were the Founding Fathers guided bymodern liberalism in their efforts toestablish a framework of government?

Viewpoint: Yes. The Founding Fathers were most influenced by the writingsof British liberals such as John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Hobbes, allof whom stressed the values of individualism, capitalism, private interest, andthe market economy.

Viewpoint: No. The Founding Fathers were guided by the classical republi-canism of Aristotle, Cicero, Niccolo Machiavelli, James Harrington, and Vis-count Bolingbroke, all of whom advanced the values of public virtue and civichumanism.

ceived corruption in Parliament and why it passed seemingly capricious and unconstitutionalmeasures against the colonies after 1763. Finally, this republican ideology continued to influ-ence political leaders at the Constitutional Convention (1787) and into the early national period,particularly during the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and James Madison(1809-1817).

Complicating this interpretive weave are recent scholars who see the either/or dichotomy ofLockean liberalism and classical republicanism as inadequate in explaining the ideas articulatedby the Revolutionary leaders. Instead of one hegemonic paradigm dominating political dis-course, several languages of politics permeated the "great national discussion" surrounding theFounding. Along with classical republicanism and Lockean liberalism, one should add the "polit-ical tongues" of work-ethic Protestantism and state-centered theories of power and sovereignty.Like civic humanism, the philosophy of work-ethic Protestantism centered around a perpetualstruggle, one between the forces of industry and idleness. Whereas civic humanism encouragedpublic citizenship as a virtue, work-ethic Protestantism promoted self-centered economic pro-ductivity as the mark of a virtuous individual. A citizen's duty was still to contribute to the publicgood, but this goal was best reached by heeding God's call to engage in useful and productivework. Nearly at the opposite pole from the individualistic paradigm of work-ethic Protestantism isthe political discourse of power and sovereignty, an ideology held by nationalists who envi-sioned the United States as an imperial state. If the United States were to survive in a world ofrapacious nation-states, it also needed to become a centralized nation-state with sovereignpowers to tax, regulate trade, coin money, conduct foreign policy, and organize a standing army.To these nationalists, the Constitution was the instrument that would provide the central govern-ment with the energy and power enabling the United States to become the supreme leader inworld affairs.

Viewpoint:Yes. The Founding Fathers weremost influenced by the writingsof British liberals such as JohnLocke, Adam Smith, and ThomasHobbes, all of whom stressedthe values of individualism,capitalism, private interest, andthe market economy.

In framing the government after theAmerican Revolution (1775-1783), theFounders followed the modern liberal theoriesof English philosophers John Locke and Tho-mas Hobbes and Scottish economist AdamSmith more often than the views of classicalrepublicans. Modern liberalism, a politicalview that advocated minimal government,appealed to all the Founders at least partially,and it was enthusiastically supported by Alex-ander Hamilton, George Washington, and theFederalist Party. The liberal versus classicalrepublican debate did not start in America,however, but rather in the heated political cli-mate of mid-eighteenth-century Britain, towhich most American colonists looked forpolitical leadership before 1775.

At the beginning of the eighteenth cen-tury the British Parliament faced grave prob-lems, including almost constant warfareagainst other European powers concerningcolonies and trade, a spiraling national debt,

and the transition of its economy from anagrarian to a commercial mode. The nature ofthe British government compounded theseproblems: it was a corrupt system of politicalpatronage that granted most civil-service jobsto debauched (and often incompetent) aristo-crats, who were themselves led by hereditarymonarchs of variable ability.

As warfare and debt drained the treasury,Britain faced an enormous social challenge atmidcentury. The increasingly commercialeconomy had created a new class of entrepre-neurs, who challenged the traditional basis ofBritain's social, economic, and political fabric.This new commercial elite was composed oflandowners, stockbrokers, merchants, and oth-ers engaged in commerce, who made up the"Court" interest, named for their presence atthe court in London. Opposing the Courtview was the "Country" interest, composed ofthe lesser aristocracy of country gentlemenwho still lived on their land. Supporters of theCountry view believed that they were beingpushed aside socially, economically, and politi-cally. Furthermore, the Country believed thatthe Court's presence in London would pres-sure Parliament to pass laws favorable to com-merce, which would have a corrupting effecton government. Classical republicans such asfourth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher Aris-totle, early-sixteenth-century Italian philoso-pher Niccolo Machiavelli, and seventeenth-century English political theorist James Har-rington believed that liberty stemmed fromindependence, which was best achieved and

HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 119

Portrait of ThomasJefferson by Mather

Brown, 1786(Smithsonian Institution, National

Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.)

maintained by yeoman farmers. Only indepen-dent landholders generated the steady incomerequired to support the state's needs fordefense, justice, and public works. Therefore,the classical republican virtue of civil servicewas equated with agrarian interests. BritishCountry interests believed that they were thevirtuous members of the state and that theCourt was inherently corrupt.

Classical republicans condemned theCourt, but modern liberal thinkers disagreed.Smith, one of the leading thinkers of the Scot-tish Enlightenment, proposed that it was actu-ally commerce (and therefore the Court) thatwas virtuous, and that country gentlemen werecorrupt. Smith reasoned that a country gentle-man prospered only when he had dozens, ifnot hundreds, of people working directly forhim. The gentleman was his subordinates' mas-ter economically and judicially, since feudalrights granted legal administration to masters.Commerce, Smith admitted, increased interde-pendence among diverse manufacturers butdecreased dependence on a particular master.Therefore, this interdependence of commercialinterests actually maximized individual free-dom. Impartial legal administration, possibleonly in a commercial economy, would allowgreater freedom and independence than in a

feudal land arrangement because people wouldfeel as if they had legal recourse against sei-zures of property, broken contracts, andunpaid debts.

Until about 1775, Americans tended toembrace the classical republican Country per-spective, believing their colonial hardships tobe caused by a Parliament controlled by cor-rupt ministers heavily pressured by the com-mercial Court. The Revolutionary Warchanged this idea, as evidenced by the Declara-tion of Independence (1776), Articles of Con-federation (1781), Constitution of the UnitedStates (1787), Bill of Rights (1791), andHamilton's Report on Public Credit (1790)-allof which were heavily influenced by Enlighten-ment liberals. By merely engaging in a revolu-tion, the American colonists advocated whatthey felt was a natural right to resist oppres-sion and to throw off tyrannical government.Thomas Jefferson, who is usually consideredto be a classical republican because of his beliefin the virtue of yeoman farmers, ventured intothe liberal camp with his writing of the Decla-ration of Independence, which contains ideasfirst articulated almost one hundred years ear-lier by Locke. Locke's view, expressed in hisSecond Treatise on Government (1690), was thatgovernment is a sacred trust set up by the peo-ple, to whom it is responsible. If the govern-ment should, by its actions, violate the sanctityof its agreement with the people, the trustshould be dissolved. Locke's ideas were plainlyevident as Jefferson proposed exactly whatLocke had argued: the overthrow of Britishking George III as monarch of the Americancolonies and the founding of an entirely newgovernment of, by, and for the people.

The Articles of Confederation, roundlycriticized in history books as a monumentalfailure, were America's first attempt at liberal-ism in government. Adopted in 1777 and rati-fied four years later, the Articles sought toavoid duplicating Parliament's oppressivehand by creating a liberal government thatwould maximize individual freedom. They cre-ated a weak central government that could noteven levy taxes, and most of their powers weredelegated to the states and to individuals. Cen-tral to the Articles was the liberal belief in theinherent improvability of the human mind,which did not need to be strictly controlled bygovernment. Other liberal thinkers influencedthe men writing the Articles: Locke believedthat government was a sacred trust and shouldnot be larger or smaller than people wanted;Smith argued that man should be free to pur-sue his own self-interest; and Hobbes con-tended that man was born free of a master,unless one was imposed upon him by force,

120 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

and that rulers derived their authority fromthe consent of the people. Modern liberalsbelieved that absolute minimal governmentwas necessary to ensure an ordered and flour-ishing society. The Articles of Confederationinstituted a minimalist government that lackedcentral authority, which eventually provedimpractical.

With the failure of the Articles, theFounders required a new frame of govern-ment. The Founders first agreed on eigh-teenth-century French political philosopherBaron de Montesquieu's vision of a three-partgovernment consisting of executive, legislative,and judicial branches that would be keptstrictly separate (unlike the overlappingbranches of corrupt Parliament). Unlike classi-cal republicans, who advocated a special classof rulers and lawmakers, Montesquieu's liberaltheory distrusted politicians and advocated asystem to split, check, and balance govern-ment. Powers would be divided among thethree branches so that any two branches couldcheck the third and therefore balance overallgovernment. James Madison, drawing on ear-lier ideas from eighteenth-century ScottishEnlightenment thinker David Hume, advo-cated a large government in which several fac-tions would serve to check each other andprevent an unhealthy concentration of powerin the hands of one faction, as often happenedin Parliament.

In a departure from the Articles of Con-federation, the Founders endeavored to forman executive branch, but having read ThomasPaine's Common Sense (1776), most of themrejected despotic tendencies by deciding not toestablish another hereditary monarchy. Thejudiciary was much more loosely defined butwas definitively separated from Congress,unlike the judicial powers held in Parliament.This branch approached the power of theother two branches only after the monumentalU.S. Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Mad-ison (1803), which established judicial review.

A legislature was necessary, but Parlia-ment was an unsuitable model, in part becauseof its composition: the House of Lords, theupper chamber, was composed of peers of therealm (higher aristocrats possessing the title ofduke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron) andthe most important Anglican bishops andarchbishops. The House of Commons, thelower chamber, was composed of elected Mem-bers of Parliament (MPs) chosen by ancient"boroughs," which might or might not corre-spond to population centers. Only about 4percent of Britain's population was enfran-chised, with voting privileges based on prop-erty ownership. America did not have

aristocrats, an established church, nor bor-oughs, but it preserved Parliament's bicameralnature to split the all-important powers of tax-ation and lawmaking. As a result of broad suf-frage, Americans could hope to elect toCongress a varied group of men, therebyavoiding the narrow interests and corruptionof Parliament.

Once the Framers signed the Constitu-tion, the states were left to ratify the new fed-eral charter, a process leading to widespreaddebate. The Federalists—led by Hamilton,Madison, Washington, and John Jay—believedthat the Constitution was as close as possibleto an ideal government, despite many compro-mises between sectional and economic inter-ests. Opponents of the Constitution, known asAntifederalists, were analogous to the Countryinterest in Britain. They were typically agrariandebtors who opposed the Constitution ongrounds that it was too centralized and toofavorable to commercial interests. Theybelieved that without a bill of rights that enu-merated man's natural rights, governmentwould become increasingly large and corrupt.The Federalists, on the other hand, were muchlike the old Court interest of Britain. Theywere typically commercial liberals who, draw-ing on the hard-won lessons of the Articles ofConfederation, believed that a strongly cen-tralized government was essential to the cre-ation of a viable nation. They agreed with theAntifederalists about man's inalienable rightsbut felt that spelling them out in a bill ofrights would limit natural rights to the narrowdefinition of an amendment. Publication ofthe popular, pro-Constitution The FederalistPapers (1787-1788)-written by Hamilton,Madison, and Jay—sealed the liberal Federal-ists' victory, condemning the classical republi-can Antifederalists to irrelevance. Despite theirmisgivings, the Federalists agreed to draw up abill of rights at the first meeting of Congressin order to ensure ratification. Drawing on theEnlightenment thought of Locke, Montesquieu,Hobbes, and French philosophers Jean-JacquesRousseau and Voltaire, the Founders pro-duced a liberal document spelling out therights of all men, not just the wealthy or privi-leged, leaving specifically nondelegated powersto the states and the people.

Finally, the Framers' new governmentrequired a workable national financial system. Tomanage that job, Washington appointed Hamil-ton as secretary of the treasury, who drew on thetheories of Smith in creating a fiscally strongnation. In the first twelve years following the rat-ification of the Constitution, Washington,Hamilton, and John Adams favored Smith'svision of liberal, commercial interests in a cen-

HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 121

tralized government. Opponents of this viewbroke off under the leadership of Jefferson andMadison, calling themselves Democratic-Republicans,who, like the classical republican Country inter-est in Britain, advocated a small government eco-nomically reliant on yeoman farmers. Theybelieved that virtue and independence came onlyfrom landownership.

Hamilton's first challenge was to call in allold bonds issued during and after the Revolutionin exchange for new, interest-bearing bonds, pay-able on specific dates. Many of the old bonds,thought to be seriously devalued, had been soldat a heavy discount by the original owners (manyof them farmers) to wealthy speculators. Hamil-ton proposed that these bonds be paid at facevalue, meaning that the original bondholderswould lose the discounted difference and specula-tors would make an enormous profit. Second,Hamilton proposed that the central governmentassume state debts, meaning that the federal gov-ernment would take responsibility for the debt'seventual payment. He believed that this so-calledpermanent debt would give speculators a vestedinterest in the nation's survival and prompt evenmore investment. Third, in a constitutionallydubious move, Hamilton asked Congress to char-ter a national bank for the government to depositfunds, collect taxes, and pay expenses, in additionto loaning money to businesses. Finally, Hamil-ton proposed two new taxes: one on whiskey dis-tillation (affecting mostly the backcountryregions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and NorthCarolina), and a revenue-raising tariff on importsthat would also protect America's fledgling man-ufacturing sector. The plan generated stormydebate as it clearly favored wealthy speculatorsand commerce at the expense of small farmers,but it was finally passed as written; the only com-promise was the removal of the capital from NewYork City to a site closer to Virginia to assuageagrarian interests. Hamilton's plan establishedthe primacy of America's commercial economybased on Smith's liberal writings.

In framing America's new government, theFounders used many classical and contemporarysources for guidance. By 1790 the U.S. govern-ment had been shaped more by modern liberal-ism than any other competing philosophy.Locke's writings on the dissolubility of govern-ment are clearly evident in the Declaration ofIndependence; Hobbes's belief that governmentshould grant maximum freedom to the individualis manifest in the Articles of Confederation;Montesquieu's liberal suspicion of government isthe foundation of the Constitution; Voltaire'sdistrust of an established church is found in thefirst amendment of the Bill of Rights; andSmith's preference for commerce is visible inHamilton's financial plan. The split between Fed-

eralists and Antifederalists, and later Federalistsand Democratic-Republicans, closely mirroredBritain's struggle between the Court and Coun-try interests and the intellectual distinctionbetween modern liberals (Locke, Smith, andHobbes) and classical republicans (Aristotle,Machiavelli, and Harrington). Just as mercantileinterests of Britain's liberal Court eventuallygained supremacy over classical Country gentle-men, the commercial interests of the liberal Fed-eralists shaped the earliest days of the UnitedStates much more so than the classical Antifeder-alists or Democratic-Republicans.

-KRISTI L. NICHOLS,U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY

Viewpoint:No. The Founding Fatherswere guided by the classicalrepublicanism of Aristotle,Cicero, Niccolo Machiavelli,James Harrington, and ViscountBolingbroke, all of whomadvanced the values of publicvirtue and civic humanism.

When the Founding Fathers led the Thir-teen Colonies into a revolution (1775-1783)for their independence from Britain, theyrelied on a long-standing body of Westernpolitical thought that historians have come toidentify as classical republicanism. This ideol-ogy drew on assumptions first made in ancientGreece and Rome. Subsequent thinkersrefined this belief system, and it achieved itsgreatest coherence in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. When the Founding Fathersbecame leaders of a revolution, the classicalrepublican tradition shaped their notions ofwhy they had to build a republic, what condi-tions most threatened their efforts, and whattheir new society ought to look like.

Those operating within the classicalrepublican tradition shared one overridingassumption: that power and liberty were per-petually locked in combat. Power alwayssought more power, and as it grew more pow-erful it began to extinguish liberty. Englishclassical republican thinkers, such as JamesHarrington in the seventeenth century andHenry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, in theeighteenth century, argued that the govern-ment always sought power and that peoplecherished liberty. Thus, the people's libertywas ever in danger because if rulers succeededin their aims, they would become powerful to

122 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

the point where they were beyond the controlof the citizens, and then liberty would die.

Writing in the 1650s, Harrington devotedmuch time to a discussion of how best to pre-serve liberty, which, he insisted, depended onan engaged and civic-minded citizenry thatzealously watched the state and prevented itfrom behaving tyrannically. Harringtondescribed this citizenry as virtuous. Moderninterpretations of virtue suggest someone whorefrains from socially unacceptable behavior,or at the least, one who is proper in his or herprivate conduct. Harrington's conception ofvirtue was almost antithetical to the modernone. He drew on the concept of the term thathe discovered in early-sixteenth-century Italianphilosopher Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses(1517). Classical republican thinkers such asMachiavelli and Harrington believed that onlymen could be virtuous because virtue requiredcomplete political and economic indepen-dence. According to Machiavelli, those withvirtue could carry arms, but they also pos-sessed the freedom to choose the conflicts inwhich they would participate. The only peoplewith such freedom in early modern Europewere landowners. Virtuous citizens had to ownland and so had the right to bear arms whenand where they chose, and these were rightsrestricted to men.

Such independent men had the capacity toexhibit virtue, but they did not automaticallydo so. Classical republican thinkers such asMachiavelli, Harrington, and seventeenth-centuryEnglish author Algernon Sydney argued thatindependent landed men became virtuouswhen they decided to devote themselves to theperpetuation of liberty. This decision wasinherently public-spirited, because it was thestate that sought to extinguish liberty. To pre-serve liberty, one had to participate in publiclife. One had to become a zealous observer ofthe state, even when one would rather pursueone's private interests. The ultimate exampleof virtue was when a citizen voluntarily subor-dinated his own private interests to the largerpublic good of preserving liberty. Thus, even ifthe state, in its quest for power, pursued poli-cies that helped a citizen as an individual, thevirtuous man measured his own personal bet-terment against the impact it would have onliberty. If personal interest and liberty were atodds, the virtuous man, every single time, hadto sacrifice his own interests for the sake of thegreater good.

Thus, acting with virtue and public spiritwas tremendously difficult. Harringtoninsisted that dependent figures—those whorelied on the state for income, who rented landfrom others, and who worked for wages—could

never be virtuous. In private life they might bedecent, generous, and kind, but in public mat-ters they were not free to make their own deci-sions and so could not join in the struggle toprotect liberty from power. Only the trulyindependent and virtuous could participate inthat struggle. Harrington famously argued inThe Commonwealth of Oceana, (1656) that in ajust society, power followed land, and propertywas widely distributed. When a great manymen owned land, and when landowners madepolitical decisions, only then was libertysecure.

This classical republican tradition becamedeeply influential in eighteenth-century Brit-ain and in the thirteen American colonies. Itenjoyed such influence because at critical timesbetween 1715 and 1776 it seemed to explainthe behavior of the British state and much ofits colonial policies. Between 1715 and 1730classical republicanism became the primarybody of ideas—the political ideology—used tocriticize the British government. While thosewho relied on classical republicanism in Brit-ain became increasingly marginal as the eigh-teenth century progressed, their ideascontinued to influence American leaders.Between 1763 and 1816 classical republican-ism became the dominant political idiom inNorth America; it was the most significant ide-ology Americans used to explain their fearsand express their aspirations.

Classical republicanism dominated Britishopposition thought during the first third ofthe eighteenth century because of two main-stream developments in British society andpolitics. Starting with the Glorious Revolu-tion (1688), key aspects of sovereign powershifted from the Crown to Parliament, espe-cially to the House of Commons. By 1725 noone questioned that the House of Commonsalone could tax. Parliament met regularly, atleast once a year, and while the King couldveto acts of Parliament, increasingly he did notdare do so. Thus, one development was therise of a limited constitutional monarchywhere Parliament proscribed the powers of themonarch.

The second mainstream development wasthe rise of what historians call the fiscal-militarystate. The eighteenth-century British state spentmost of its time fighting wars and figuring outhow to pay for them. By 1725 it had estab-lished its method of payment: debt. Since theHouse of Commons alone could tax, it couldguarantee regular annual revenue. Beginningin 1694 the Commons promised to fund itspublic debt. That meant that it promised tomake its first annual priority paying the inter-est on money loaned to the state by private

HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 123

PUBLIC VIRTUEIn "Address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Vir-ginia* (1776) Virginia politician and planter Carter Braxton, who served asa delegate to the Continental Congress and was financially ruined by theRevolutionary War (177&~1783}f comments on the meaning of virtue:

It te well known that private and publick virtue arematerially different. The happiness and dignity of man, Iadmit, consists in the practice of private virtues, and tothis he is stimulated by the rewards promised to suchconduct. In this he acts for himself, and with a view ofpromoting his own particular welfare. Publick virtue, onthe other hand, means a disinterested attachment to thepubiick good, exclusive and independent of all privateand selfish interest, and which, though sometimes pos-sessed by a few individuals, never characterized themass of the people in any state. And this is said to be theprinciple of democraticai Governments, and to influenceevery subject of it to pursue such measures as conduceto the prosperity of the whole. A man, therefore, to qual-ify himself for a member of such a community, mustdivest himself of all interested motives, and engage in nopursuits which do not ultimately redound to the benefit ofsociety* He must not, through ambition, desire to begreat, because it would destroy that equality on whichthe security of the Government depends; nor ought he tobe rich, lest he be tempted to indulge himself in thoseluxuries which, though lawful, are not expedient, andmight occasion envy and emulation. Should a persondeserve the esteem of his fellow-citizens and becomepopular, he must be neglected, if not banished, lest hisgrowing influence disturb the equilibrium. It is remark-able that neither the justice of Aristides nor the bravery ofTh&mistocl&s could shield them from the darts of envyand jealousy; nor are modern times without examples ofthe same kind,

Source: *54 Perfect Model of the English Constitution: [Carter Brax-ton}, 'Address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Domin-fonof Virginia*(177&),"inCQtonte$ to Nation: 1763-1789, edltedbyJack F> Greene (New York: McGraw-Hill, W67), p. 322.

subjects of the British monarch. British sub-jects quickly realized that by loaning moneythey received a guaranteed annual income, andas long as the state never paid them back whatthey had lent, this income in the form of inter-est payments would last indefinitely. Thus, theBritish state could borrow vast sums, but eachyear it only needed to pay back a tiny percent-age of what it borrowed.

This revolution in public finance hadpolitical implications. Leaders of Parliamentbegan to make use of the vast wealth at theirdisposal. Wars and the growth of British stateand empire created a vast bureaucracy of taxcollectors, military officers, clerks, and finan-

cial consultants. In addition, warfare createdan unending need for military supplies. Thegovernment had to fill all of these positions,and each one brought a salary or a lucrativecontract to supply Britain's fighting forces.Political leaders realized that by dispensingthis patronage within Parliament, and amongthe wealthy and influential outside of it, theycould create unquestioned loyalty toward thegovernment and its policies. By the 1730s amajority of members of Parliament receivedsome form of patronage or pension.

This situation was Harrington's worstnightmare. Eighteenth-century classical repub-lican thinkers argued that patronage corruptedParliament. Men gave up their virtue for lucra-tive state incomes; they became dependent onthe money they earned from government inter-est payments, contracts, and pensions. Thus,on paper, independent landed members of Par-liament wielded considerable power. In reality,however, the King's ministers seduced and cor-rupted them and eventually reduced them tovassals of the monarch. In this manner libertybecame seriously threatened.

A small, though talented, group aroundLord Bolingbroke made these points againand again. Poets, playwrights, and novelistssuch as Alexander Pope, John Gay, andJonathan Swift denounced the corrupt fiscal-military state and insisted that only tradi-tional, independent, and virtuous landownerscould preserve liberty. These independentlandowners had the material resources and thewill to resist corruption of the state, but astheir numbers shrank liberty grew weaker. Thesolution was to restore traditional, landed, andvirtuous men to positions of authority. Oncethey reclaimed power, they could reverse allthe pernicious developments of eighteenth-century British politics. They could reduce thedebt, stop the costly wars, curtail the expan-sion of finance and commerce, and restore thereal and solid economy and profit making thatcame with growing necessary agriculturalgoods on land that they owned.

By 1750 this classical republican critiquebarely resonated in Britain. The revolution infinance and the fiscal-military state was toosuccessful, and made too many people wealthyand comfortable, for more than a few Britonsto take it seriously. However, educated Ameri-cans voraciously read the works of Englishopposition writers. Indeed, if ever there was asociety where classical republicanism wouldbecome deeply influential, that society waseighteenth-century British North America.Approximately 80 percent of adult white menowned their own land, compared to roughly10 percent in Britain. From one end of the

124 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

social order to the other, American colonistsembraced a belief system that insisted thatindependent farmers were capable of virtueand therefore well suited to undertake thestruggle to preserve liberty. Thus, the writingsof British classical republican thinkers weretaken far more seriously in the colonies than inBritain. Classical republicanism was mostinfluential in the Southern colonies, where thelanded gentry considered themselves theembodiment of republicanism, but in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century classical republi-can ideals—the subordination of private inter-est to the public good—became influentialthroughout America.

When the British government becamemore aggressive and demanding toward thecolonies following the conclusion of the SevenYears' War (1756-1763), classical republican-ism seemed to explain to many Americansthese new and alarming developments. Classi-cal republicanism taught that power wouldseek more power and try to destroy liberty. Itargued that as governors ceased to be tradi-tional, independent, landed, and virtuous citi-zens, the state would lose the capacity toidentify liberty and would eventually cease tocare about it. Finally, eighteenth-century Brit-ish classical republican thinkers had beenexplaining for fifty years that Britain wasbecoming a corrupt society where those whocared for liberty were pushed to the margins,and where the independent, virtuous House ofCommons was slowly being seduced intosilence with sordid, unnatural wealth. Theresult would be tyranny. Parliament's colonialmeasures passed between 1764 and 1774appeared to confirm for the colonists every-thing that the republican critics of the fiscal-military state had always warned.

By 1776 many Americans were convincedthat the only way to preserve liberty was tobreak from Britain, but the Founders believedthat independence was not enough. TheUnited States had to become the "anti-Brit-ain," a nation without a vast public debt orhuge armies and navies. It had to preserve alargely agricultural economy and widespreadownership of land. American political writingup to 1776 spoke of a conspiracy to destroyliberty and to enslave citizens. The languageand concerns in these revolutionary tracts werepurely classical republican. The system of sepa-ration of powers and checks-and-balancesstemmed from their profound distrust ofpower. Armed revolts that occurred in 1786(Shays's Rebellion) and 1794 (Whiskey Rebel-lion) suggest the continued unwillingness ofAmericans after the Revolution to trust a cen-tralized, national state. Furthermore, the rise

after 1791 of the Democratic-Republican Partybehind Thomas Jefferson and James Madisonwas entirely owing to the intense dislike of cen-tralized power and the hatred of any practicesthat revived memories of Britain.

Under Presidents Jefferson and Madison,between 1801 and 1816, Americans pursuedtheir classical republican commitments morecompletely than ever before. Madison's andJefferson's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions(1798-1799) denounced centralized powerand argued that small virtuous communitiesshould govern themselves whenever libertywas in danger. After 1801 the JeffersonianRepublicans paid off the nation's debt andrepealed all internal taxes, thereby evisceratingthe capacity of the national government to imi-tate the fiscal- military state. In 1803 Jeffersonpurchased the Louisiana Territory fromFrance and so acquired enough land to main-tain widespread landownership, and a societyof independent, virtuous farmers, for what hebelieved would be a thousand generations. Jef-ferson wrote in Notes on Virginia (1781):

Those who labor in the earth are the chosenpeople of God. . . . Corruption of morals inthe mass of cultivators is a phenomenon ofwhich no age nor nation has furnished anexample . . . generally speaking, the propor-tion which the aggregate of the other classesof citizens bears in any state to that of its hus-bandmen is the proportion of its unsound toits healthy parts, and is a good enough barom-eter whereby to measure its degree of corrup-tion.

Harrington and Bolingbroke would havevigorously agreed with this statement.

-ANDREW SHANKMAN,NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

ReferencesJoyce Appleby, "Republicanism in New and

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