Men of Great Faith
i. In contrast to
the Framers, the Anti-federalists held that self-interest could not be the
organizing principle of a good polity. A
good polity relied not upon the unleashing of self-interest, but its restraint
and proper ordering. While many
Anti-federalists adopted the natural rights language dominant in many of those
contemporary debates, the thrust of their arguments was a hearkening back to
pre-modern understandings of human nature and its necessary formation in political
settings. That is, rather than assuming,
like the Framers, that human beings are by natural free and independent
individuals, the Anti-federalist’s emphasis on education and the inculcation of
virtue rested on the view that man is by nature a political animal. This view was stated most clearly by Agrippa
of Massachusetts, who explicitly rejects the assumptions about human nature
that underlie the philosophy of the Constitution:
It is common to
consider man at first as in a state of nature, separate from all society. The only historical evidence, that the human
species ever existed in this state, is derived from the book of Genesis. There, it is said, that Adam remained a while
alone. While the whole species was
comprehended in his person was the only instance in which this supposed state
of nature really existed. Ever since the
completion of the first pair, mankind appear as natural to associate with their
own species, as animals of any other kind herd together. Wherever we meet with their settlements, they
are found in clans. We are therefore
justified in saying, that a state of society is the natural condition of
man. Wherever we find a settlement of
men, we find also some appearance of government. The state of government is therefore as natural
to mankind as a state of society.
[CAF, 6:107]
Agrippa’s clear statement on this
point helps to make sense the Anti-federalists’ near-unanimous insistence on
the necessity of virtue as the basis for the good polity. Government is not merely the artificial
restraint upon our natural and ungoverned self-interest; it is the natural
inculcation of the excellent qualities of human nature to achieve a standard of
self-governance, laws freely made and willingly observed. In accordance with classical teachings such
as found in Aristotle or the widespread colonial understanding of Christian
liberty, government and law is educative, making us more fully human rather
than restricting our natural liberty.
Numerous Anti-federalists objected to the absence in the Constitution
requiring formal institutions of civic education, although for many the law was
thought to be itself an education, and should reflect that underlying view of
the necessity to teach restraint and self-governance.
Avarice/luxury
ii. A government based upon self-interest would
incline to self-aggrandizement, vainglory, avarice, dominion and ultimately
would be tempted to adopt measures antithetical to republican government in
order to retain the pleasures associated with the satisfactions of self-interest. The Anti-federalists insisted that the proper
sphere for the inculcation of civic virtue was necessarily within the confines
of small republic. A small republic
afforded an intimate bond between the ruling body and the laws, leading to the voluntary
and willing submission to laws made by the people themselves. A smaller sphere permitted the flourishing of
local variety and legislation that reflected particular local and cultural
commitments. The Anti-federalists feared
that the consequence of greater distance between ruler and ruled would be the
felt sense that law would be an external imposition, thereby requiring its
enforced observance. They feared that
the national uniformity of laws would result in the destruction of local
variety and particularity, and would create instead a homogenous nation which
would be ruled entirely from the center, giving rise to an “aristocratical”
ruling class.
They saw in the proposed
Constitution a strong tendency toward becoming a commercial empire. Patrick Henry asked, “shall we imitate the
example of those nations who have gone from a simple to a splendid
government? Are those nations more
worthy of our imitation….? If we admit
this Consolidated Government, it will because we like a great and splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and
mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things…”
(5.16.2). Cecilia Kenyon is undoubtedly
correct to note that the Anti-federalists feared the rule of a small cadre of
self-aggrandizing elites; however, it was not so much government tout court that they feared, so much as
(as Christopher Duncan has perceptively argued) a “corrupt or detached
government.” It was not that they
misunderstood the ambitions of the Constitution; they disagreed with its basic
aims, instead urging a commitment to a modest republic of relatively local
commerce and defensive military posture.
As Melancton Smith would argue in the New York ratification debates
against his opponent Alexander Hamilton, a more local and modest scale would
not only serve as the cradle of an education of virtue, but would provide
modest means for the attainment of great ambitions.
Those in the middling circumstances
have less temptation – they are inclined by habit and the company with whom
they associate, to set bounds to their passions and appetites – if this is
not sufficient, they also want the means to gratify them – and they are
obliged to employ their time in their respective callings. Hence, the
yeomanry of the country are more temperate, of better morals, and less ambition
than the great. [emphasis mine]
And,
of course, the Anti-federalists held that any inculcation in the virtues of
self-restraint and self-government required a sound and widespread set of
religious commitments. Perceiving among
a number of the Federalists a skepticism toward religious belief, they noted
the Constitution’s silence about God and protections for worship, and argued on
behalf of the central role of religion in the maintenance of republican self-government. As the Revolution’s historian Mercy Warren
was to write, America ought not to follow the example of Enlightenment Europe
on the path toward incipient secularism:
“Bent on gratification, at the expense of every moral tie, they have
broken down the barriers of religion, and the spirit of infidelity is nourished
at the fount; thence the poisonous streams run through every grade that
constitutes the mass of nations” (6.14.148).
In their belief
that a limited and modest republic could serve as the necessary backdrop for
the inculcation of virtue, the Anti-federalists showed themselves to be men of
great faith, not men of little faith as Cecilia Kenyon contended nearly 60
years ago. Rejecting the cramped view
that “moral and religious motives cannot be relied upon,” the Anti-federalists
insisted that virtue was a lived possibility in the small settings of the
American confederation, and sought to defend those cradles of civic inculcation
against efforts to dissipate their influence and unleash ambition and appetite
toward the goal of national glory and “splendor.” If their argument was weaker, as Herbert
Storing concluded, it was only because its achievement is always a challenge,
never without difficulty. Building higher than the “low but solid ground” of
modern philosophy, the Anti-federalists relied upon the inculcation of
restraint of appetite and ambition – never an easy task for fallen and sinful
mankind.
iii. In contrast to the Framers, whose system
sought to encourage the great and ambitious to hold public office, and the
superiority of good administration to local rule, the Anti-federalists insisted
upon the superiority of the common sense embedded in and derived from the
variety of places throughout the confederation.
Rather than promoting office-holders from among the group of
“speculative men,” the Anti-federalist Melancton Smith commended the homely
virtues of ordinary citizens, arguing that they were grounded in modest
professions and less likely to be subject to aggrandizing ambition and national
glory. Smith argued in favor of what
might be called “local knowledge,” or sensus
communis, a common and shared stockpile of accumulated wisdom that is
derived from the lived experience of people in the places they lived, knew, and
loved.
The idea that
naturally suggests itself to our minds, when we speak of representatives, is
that they resemble those they represent; they should be a true picture of the
people; possess the knowledge of their circumstances and their wants;
sympathize in all their distresses, and be disposed to seek their true
interests. The knowledge necessary for
the representation of a free people, not only comprehends extensive political
and commercial information, such as acquired by men of refined education, who
have the leisure to attain to high degrees of improvement, but it should also
comprehend that kind of acquaintance with the common concerns and occupations of the people, which men of the
middling class of life are in general much better competent to, than those of a
superior class. To understand the true
commercial interests of a country, not only requires just ideas of the general
commerce of the world, but also, and principally,
a knowledge of the productions of your own country and their value, what your
soil is capable of producing, the nature of your manufacture…, [and more than]
an acquaintance with the abstruse parts of the system of finance. [Melancton Smith, 6.12.15]
The
Anti-federalists recognized that modern republics required a form of
representation, though their theory inclined them to a sympathy with more
direct forms of democratic self-governance.
To the extent that representation was required, they argued that
representatives should be bound closely in ties of friendship and close contact
with constituents, and that the opportunity to serve as public servant to one’s
fellow citizens should be widely available, namely through shorter terms and
rotation in office. Relatively small and
coherent districts were strongly supported by the Anti-federalists.
A
more numerous legislature composed of “yeomen” lawmakers was therefore one goal
of the Anti-federalists, one that would reflect the variety of local
circumstance and encourage a strong connection between office-holders and
constituents. The New York
Anti-federalist Melancton Smith contended that a mutually-reinforcing virtuous
cycle would result, in which men of “middling” circumstance would serve in
government – and in which frequent rotation would ensure the existence of a
large body of civically-minded citizens – that would in turn encourage
civic-mindedness among the broader body of citizens. While representatives would naturally be
drawn to defending and advancing the interests specific to his particular
district, the dynamic interaction and civic trust between representatives and
represented meant that there was greater likelihood of discussion and
persuasion over public matters – that politics would go beyond the expression
of mere interest that was the deepest assumption of modern philosophic
assumptions, but instead would in some ways be a form of education about the
one’s interests, “rightly understood.”
Representatives
must not only speak for the interests
of their constituents, but speak to
and with them. As the Anti-federalist Brutus agreed, the
trust between representative and constituency made it possible for
representatives to “mix with the people and explain to them the motives which
enduced the adoption of any measure, point out its utility and remove … any
unreasonable clamors against it….” By
contrast, he feared in the arrangement of the proposed Constitution, with a
republic of large extent and few elite representatives, that “the people in
general would be acquainted with very few of their rulers: the people at large would know very little of
their proceedings, an dit would be extremely difficult to change them.” Increasingly perceiving their government to
be distant and unknowable, Brutus argued that
the citizenry would eventually “have no confidence in their legislature,
suspect them of ambitious views, be jealous of every measure they adopt and not
support the laws they pass.”
Increasingly perceiving laws to repressions externally imposed – and not self-generated – government would be
“foreign” and outside, law would cease to be understood to be self-imposed, and
a growing apparatus of external enforcement would become necessary, even to the
point, Brutus concluded, that an “armed force [would be needed] to execute laws
at the point of a bayonet.”
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