SOURCE: Pangle, Thomas L. “The Federalist Papers' Vision of Civic Health and the Tradition Out of Which That Vision Emerges.” Western Political Quarterly 39, no. 4 (December 1986): 577-602.

[In the following essay, Pangle explores The Federalist Papers's use of and deviation from the classical tradition of Republicanism, suggesting that Publius developed a new definition of civic virtue. Citing influences such as Machiavelli, Hume, and Montesquieu, Pangle highlights the path of Publius in creating a new idea of civic health and of liberty itself.]

The bicentennial of the American Constitution invites us to reconsider not only the legal and constitutional theory that informed the framing, but also the more fundamental and difficult question of the kind of human being and the way of life the Founders saw the new regime as fostering. The inhabitants of the United States (and, increasingly, of the West in general) are willy-nilly molded, in decisive ways, by a specific political culture. To understand this culture that shapes us, to take a truly critical or free stance toward it, we need to gain as clear a view as possible of the intentions of those who designed the basic or original stratum. The original designers of a political system are of course not the sole shapers of a nation. They may not have fully understood even their own doings or the implications of what they achieved. Besides, in the American case the Founders were a widely assorted lot with differing opinions and varying intellectual capacities, yet the American Constitution has had an unusual staying-power, and an enormous formative impact on society; it was crafted and debated at a very high level of reflection and discourse; and its framers included a small minority of geniuses who seized the initiative not merely by conciliating and reflecting current opinion but also by creating and spearheading new opinion—by seeing farther into, and articulating more perspicaciously, the roots of what was being generated.

In what follows I probe the essays that constitute the most profound of the records left behind by these un-typical, and in a sense un-representative, statesmen-theorists. I view the Federalist Papers against the background of some of the major alternative visions of the human potential articulated in the previous history of political thought. My main purpose is not speculation about the genealogy of influences (though what I say will have implications in that regard), but rather the more precise delineation of both the basic choices the Papers make and the arguments, grounded in a conception of human nature, that may support those choices. I will try to show how, as we try to uncover the Federalist's vision of a healthy or sound human life and of the deepest needs and potentialities of human nature, we come to see and share in the central moral-theoretical difficulty with which the Papers wrestle.

THE SHIFTING SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS

For much of the 19th century, and until well into the present century, the thought of the Founders tended to be understood, rather unsatisfactorily, as the culminating product of an unbroken Western tradition of “constitutionalism.”¹ But the same experiences and arguments which, early in the 20th century, began to sap the credibility of the idea of progress soon prompted doubts about this progressive and rationalist interpretation of the history of Western political philosophy. With the loosening of the grip of the old consensus, the field of vision opened up, seeming to give promise of an historical opportunity to investigate the texts of the major political philosophers with fresh eyes of wonder. Unfortunately, however, the same arguments that seemed to have undermined the faith in progress seemed also to have revealed that all moral and political “philosophizing” consisted, at best, of subtle rationalization meant to serve historically conditioned “commitments” whose source is economic interest, religious faith, or some more mysterious impulse of the sub-conscious Self and its temporally limited ontological “decisions.”

Certainly this was the attitude pervading the two reassessments of 17th and 18th century political thought that had the widest impact. On the one hand, scholarship inspired by Marxist or quasi-Marxist outlooks attempted to demonstrate the class-ideological character of both the Founders and their major philosophic sources. On the other hand, in direct opposition to this tendency but on the same plane of discourse, Max Weber and the legions he affected traced what is most significant in Enlightenment political thought (the “spirit of capitalism”) to the impact of decadent Calvinist theology (the “Protestant Ethic”). Both these reassessments shared the very considerable merit of bringing into the foreground the discontinuity or divide which separates medieval and classical thought from what Marx, following Rousseau, called the “bourgeois” outlook, typified by Locke. Nonetheless, except in a few barely plausible cases, it proved impossible to show convincingly how the reasoning of a single major political theorist or statesman could be adequately explained either as class “ideological rationalization” or as “secularization.” Indeed, these intellectual or psychological processes which were invoked as explanations themselves eluded comprehensive or precise definition.²

Perhaps partly on account of these difficulties but also, it would seem, out of a longing to discover a pre-bourgeois and pre-Lockean American “soul,” many historians and political theorists of the present generation have been attracted to two dramatically new (and in my opinion highly exaggerated) tacks. In the first of the new views, 18th century American thought is said to have been formed by a “classical republicanism” taken over from the “Country” opposition in England and traceable, in a pretty straight line, back through Cato's Letters, Bolingbroke, Sydney, and Harrington to Machiavelli and thence—hold on to your hats—to Savonarola, Aristotle, and the Spartan as well as the Roman and Venetian ideals of citizenship.³ At the core of this “essentially anti-capitalistic” grand “republican synthesis,” is said to be the concept of virtue, understood as the notion that “furthering the public good—the exclusive purpose of republican government—required the constant sacrifice of individual interests to the greater needs of the whole, the people conceived as a homogeneous body” (Shalhope 1982: 335; my italics; cf. Wood 1972: 53-65, 418, and Pocock 1975: vii, 229-30, 465-67). The Federalist is taken as the chief expression of a groping and only partly successful attempt to find an alternative to this original American “paradigm.”

Two considerations would appear to speak decisively against this currently fashionable framework. First, while it is true that the thought of the Old Whigs exerted enormous influence in America, most of the chief exponents of that thought are direct heirs to Lockean theory (cf. Robbins 1959: 5, 10, 13, 62-63, 80-81, 84, 87, 100, 106, 212, 234, 249, 254, 267, 276, 285); they by no means stand against an individualistic or capitalistic spirit, and are far from espousing classical virtue or the Aristotelian conception of man as “zoon politikon” or “political animal.” To verify these assertions, it suffices to peruse Trenchard and Gordon, “to the colonists the most important of these publicists” (Bailyn 1967: 35; cf. Pocock 1975: 467-68 and Robbins 1959: 115, 392-93).⁴

Second, the purported existence of a coherent “paradigm” or “ideology” forged out of elements as antagonistic as Bolingbroke, Machiavelli, Savonarola, Aristotle, and Sparta is implausible on its face and dissolves under close scrutiny. In 17th century thinkers like Harrington and Sydney one does find an uneasy, syncretistic attempt to put together some of these diverse elements (for a sober characterization, see Fink 1945 and Strauss's somewhat critical review, reprinted in 1959: 290-92). But the legacy of these so-called “classical republicans” can hardly be said to have maintained coherence while ballooning to include, not only a Lockean State of Nature doctrine, but also, at one pole, Adam Smith (Winch 1978) and, at the other pole, “the traditional covenant theology of Puritanism” (Wood 1972: 118; cf. Pocock 1975: contrast vii, 213, 395ff. with 335-37, 403, 512-13, 517). What we find in fact is a battle, or at least a series of severe tensions, among a number of diverse viewpoints, most of which are deeply penetrated and shaped by Lockean language and categories.⁵

No one can deny that important embers of pre-modern thought remained glowing in 18th century America. But these diverse embers constituted neither an organically unified nor the dominant flame; and it is not surprising that the claims made for “classical republicanism” have been exposed, in the very recent past, to increasingly severe criticism (e.g., Storing 1981, vol. 1: 4, 40, 83 n. 7, 91 n. 39 and n. 41; Kramnick 1982; Appleby 1982; Diggins 1984; and the literature surveyed in Shalhope 1982). Unfortunately, most of the critics other than Storing have threatened to jettison what is perhaps the most valuable feature of the new approach—its willingness to treat political ideas as somewhat independent forces in history (see esp. Bailyn 1967: vi, viii-xi; also Pocock 1972: 122).⁶

Strictures of a related sort apply to the second trend: the attempt to discover in what is called “The Scottish Enlightenment” a “communitarian” source of the Founding. In the case of The Federalist Papers, the strong influence of Hume was persuasively demonstrated by both Stourzh (1970: 70ff.) and Adair, the latter of whom pointed out the likelihood of more general influences of Scottish thinkers on the Founders (1974: 95-97 and 128; cf. also Bailyn 1967: 28 n. 8 and 40). But there is a vast leap from such sensible suggestions to the free-wheeling writings of Gary Wills (1978 and 1981). Those who adopt Wills's or more moderate versions of the “Scottish Enlightenment” thesis tend to exaggerate the continuities linking Shaftesbury to Hutcheson and the latter to Hume and Smith. At the same time, there is a tendency to overstate the disagreements between Hume or Smith or even Hutcheson, on the one hand, and Hobbes and Locke, on the other.⁷

What is needed is a treatment of the most far-sighted Founders which does not force their thought, or the thought of their philosophic teachers, into Procrustean “paradigms” constructed out of surveys of the “average” thought of the time. Fortunately, while the historical profession has been swept by the trends I have sketched, a very different approach, inspired by Leo Strauss, has been doggedly putting down its roots in our discipline. The central monument of this school is Herbert J. Storing's seven-volume Complete Anti-Federalist (1981). Surrounding this are numerous fruitful studies of early American political thought by Martin Diamond and others (see, e.g., Frisch and Stevens 1971). Despite their often sharp disagreements, these scholars are united in taking seriously the possibility that some past statesmen, historians, and theorists may have been capable, at times, of liberating themselves from the subtle blinders or limitations of ideology, culture, interest, and linguistic tradition or context. These scholars therefore study primarily arguments, not motives; they sift these arguments for their plausibility or truth, not for evidence of linguistic “context” or “class-consciousness.” With the greatest caution, they also move toward a critical judgment, achieved not by maintaining “distance” but rather by immersion in an initially docile dialogue with the thinkers under consideration. It is to this kind of encounter, it seems to me, that we are invited by Alexander Hamilton in the first of the Federalist Papers: “I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. … My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all and may be judged of by all.”

THE NEW PUBLIUS: THE NEW NATION AS THE REBIRTH OF ROMAN REPUBLICANISM?

The authors of the Papers, by taking the pen name “Publius” (referring to the founder of the Roman republic—cf. Diamond 1972: 631-33), seem to announce from the start their identification with the Greco-Roman republican tradition. But we quickly are led to see that this impression is in need of considerable modification. The new Publius appeals to a great tradition—but he does so as a rather proud, and radical, innovator within that tradition (see esp. 14:104).⁸ In his opening paragraph the new Publius indicates that he regards as still undecided the “important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” He declares his receptivity to the frequently voiced opinion that “it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country” to decide this question. He thus foreshadows the view he will later state more emphatically (9: 71-72):

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust. … If momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliancy, 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 soils that produced them have been so justly celebrated.

Publius goes on to confess that “if it had been found impracticable to have devised models of a more perfect structure, the enlightened friends to liberty would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of government as indefensible.” In other words, from the point of view of “liberty” as Publius understands it, there are non-republican forms of government that are decisively superior to any form of republic known to classical antiquity. (See, in a similar vein, Farrand 1966, 1: 288-89 and 424 [Hamilton]; contrast Epstein 1984: 5.)

Nevertheless, as one reads these lines and the passage from which they are taken, one is at first inclined to suppose that Publius means that he agrees with the classics as regards their end—“free government,” or “the forms of republican government” and “the very principles of civil liberty”—while sharply disagreeing only over means. Certainly when Publius proceeds at once to speak of the “great improvement” the “science of government” has received, and lists various new “principles,” he terms these “means, and powerful means, by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided.” This impression—that as regards what is most important, the ends or objects of aspiration, Publius is a continuer of the classical tradition—is strengthened when we observe that Publius frequently expresses his republican sentiments in a manner that has a classical ring and that betrays a sense of indebtedness to the classics. Thus Publius very early calls “noble” both the “enthusiasm for liberty” and “long and bloody war” in behalf of liberty (1: 35; 2: 38). In a place and a time prepared by “Providence” the Americans have made themselves a “band of brethren” and shed blood in defense of rights that are “sacred, thereby consecrating their union” (2: 38; 14: 104). Liberty or freedom as Publius understands it is nourished by and in turn nourishes a “vigilant and manly spirit” (57: 353; cf. 14: 104; 52: 329; 84: 514). “That honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom,” a determination intimately bound up with “the genius of the American people” and “the fundamental principles of the Revolution,” demands that republican self-government be treated as an end, and not merely as a means to security and prosperity (39: 240).

Yet self-government is emphatically not the sole end, the one highest goal of the new Constitution or of sound republican life generally. Political liberty and participation must be qualified, even severely qualified, for the sake of “security … repose and confidence in the minds of the people.” These latter are “among the chief blessings of civil society,” and “enter into the very definition of good government.” What is more, Publius is convinced that there is by no means an easy harmony, that there is in fact some considerable discord, between republican self-government and the stability and energy which are essential in government if it is to guarantee security and mental repose: “mingling” these two distinct goals “in their due proportions,” he avers, “must clearly appear to have been an arduous part” of the Convention's work (37: 226-27). In Publius's eyes, the telling flaw of classical republicanism is its failure to confront and wrestle adequately with this fundamental problem, the problem that has for the first time in history been faced and largely mastered by the Constitutional Convention.⁹

THE FEDERALIST'S ATTACK ON CLASSICAL REPUBLICANISM

The full dimensions of this flaw become evident as the Papers proceed, with Publius elaborating an increasingly intense and precise attack on the spirit and practice of classical republicanism. Publius charges that it was an intemperate zeal for direct political self-determination that led the Greeks and Romans to insist on small, tightly packed, urban republics where a large proportion of the citizenry could play a significant role in government. The diminutive size of these civic republics left them prey to the unceasing danger of foreign invasion, while their fierce and jealous sense of independence rendered them incapable of concerted defense, and prone to fratricidal strife (4: 48-49; 18: passim). Thus exposed, they naturally tended to transform their citizens into soldiers, their cities into armed camps; but instead of achieving security by such measures, they succeeded only in spawning imperialistic capacities and longings (6: 53-57). This waspish militarism was a principal source of the pressure toward conformity or homogeneity that exerted itself relentlessly on domestic politics within the classical republic; there were other sources, however, which had even greater significance.

Chief among these was the need to stifle the internecine factions that were endemic to the fiercely ambitious and restless citizenry. The classical city strove to instill a sense of kinship by imbuing all citizens with similar tastes, opinions, and property holdings. This effort inevitably failed, because it violated the natural diversity in opinions, interests, and (above all) “in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate”—a diversity which, being rooted in man's nature, cannot be removed or overcome for long (10: 78-79). What resulted from the doomed attempt, in practice, was either the tyrannizing of the many by the few or, more frequently in the long run, the tyranny of the majority—led by some “heroic” demagogue (10: 78-81; 63: 389). “Most of the popular governments of antiquity were of the democratic species”—that is, regimes where “the people meet and exercise the government in person” (14: 100). But “in all very numerous assemblies, of whatsoever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob” (55: 342). The politics of such governments were tempestuous, imprudent, and petty, endangering the security of every minority and indeed of every single individual: “popular liberty” decreed “to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next” (68: 384). At the same time, the unchecked enthusiasm for republican liberty tended to its own destruction through the undermining of sound administration: because the assembly frequently sensed its own incapacity to carry on public administration, it was easily duped by demagogues or induced to surrender itself to talented politicians and generals like Pericles (6: 54-5; 10: 79; 58: 360). Even worse, the ancient city often found itself compelled, on account of administrative crises, to have recourse to absolute dictatorship (70: 423-30). Those who sought dominion of this kind were able to exploit the pervasive “superstition of the times, one of the principal engines by which government was then maintained” (18: 123-24; 38: 233).

Publius convincingly claims, then, to possess: (1) a clearer view of the dual components of “republican liberty” (self-government and personal security), and (2) a superior insight into the proper balance between these two components.

THE CLASSICAL CONCEPTION OF CIVIC VIRTUE

This trenchant criticism all but compels the independent-minded reader to turn back to the classical historians and political theorists in order to judge the truth of Publius's charges, as well as to see more clearly just what the alternative notion of republicanism is against which the American version defines itself. In following this comparative inquiry, to which Publius in a way points, we soon see that his critical characterization of the classics is obviously correct in at least two important respects. Generally speaking, the ancients, in contrast to the American Founders, placed considerably less emphasis on securing individuals and their “rights”—to private and family safety, to property, and to the “pursuit of happiness.” And while both versions of republicanism praise political rights, or self-government, the American Framers tend to honor political participation somewhat less as an end and considerably more as a means to the protection of pre-political or personal rights.

Nevertheless, it does not follow that Plutarch's heroes or the Socratic philosophic tradition pursued political freedom or power with such singlemindedness, such lack of restraint or qualification, as might be supposed from the Federalist. The fact is, the classics were prone to view the nobility of republican self-government in a rather different light from that in which Publius sees it. What Publius regards as a foolish and ultimately tyrannical attempt to homogenize the citizenry in order to prevent an evil (faction), the classics tended to conceive as the necessary prerequisite to a great good—a spirit of fraternity. Yet the classics assigned to both fraternity and liberty a rank below that of virtue; and virtue they did not understand as simply “civic” or political, let alone as a mere means to self-government.

What does the most thoughtful expression of the original republican tradition mean by “virtue,” and how and why does it assign to virtue, so understood, the highest priority among political goals? Here we need to bear in mind the distinction between classical political practice (the actual doings of the various cities of the ancient Mediterranean world) and classical political theory (the political philosophers' and historians' critical reflections on those doings). For the classical theorists are almost as severe (if much more muted) in their criticism of the ancient city as are Hume, Hamilton, and Madison. But their criticism emerges from a very different vantage point. The classical theorists claim, in the manner of Socrates, to criticize the various civic factions and viewpoints from within, on the basis of those viewpoints' own premises and aspirations. They claim to extend and develop the incompletely realized standards and goals already implicit in the words and deeds of the most respected or respectable members of the civic community. It is these immanent standards—and not sophistic speculations or imaginary schemes such as that of Hippodamus of Miletus—that draw men “dialectically” beyond their primary or “commonsense” moral horizons.¹⁰

The classical theorists begin by giving full weight to the fact that the goals of political life which first come to sight as lending dignity to men are freedom, for one's own people, and rule over others. But they contend that reflection on the experience of liberty, and empire, reveals that these shining objects of ambition collapse into negative self-assertion and vulgar or dependent quest for prestige unless they are given more precise definition in terms of the virtues. By the “virtues” the classics mean those rare qualities of character, seldom fully realized, through which humans express their passions or passionate needs in a harmonious, graceful, and truly natural (“human”) way. On closer inspection, the virtues prove to be instances of the coordination of reason and passion in a natural synthesis which transforms both original elements. This coordination almost always requires long practice, stern testing, and difficult habituation: strong support from the sanctions of law, custom, and community opinion is therefore essential. The four “cardinal” virtues are courage, moderation (meaning especially the proper subordination of the sensual appetites), justice (meaning especially reverence for law, unselfish sharing, and public spirit), and practical wisdom (especially in assisting one's friends and fellow citizens, and taking supervisory care of one's inferiors). These character traits are valued in part because of their effectiveness in promoting the safety, prosperity, and freedom of society; but according to the classics the virtues cannot continue to flourish once they are esteemed merely as “good” (useful): they are truly only when they are treasured as “noble” or beautiful—as ends in themselves, as the highest purposes of life.

But if the virtues are to be truly the ends, then they must include the perfection of the most important or comprehensive capacities: they must be the chief elements in human happiness or fulfillment. As these thoughts sink in, “civic” virtue begins to appear an incomplete, even a defective, form of virtue. The man of merely civic virtue is a citizen or statesman who sees his excellence mainly as that of a good team member or team leader: as such, he possesses a virtue that is radically dependent on the good fortune that places him in a decent republic; his soul is ordered by a sense of shame and honor that stems from his view of the opinions his fellow-citizens hold of him; he tries to live under the illusion that he can be fulfilled simply by playing his part in the larger whole that is the good city or regime. Civic virtue is commendable, but by its incompleteness points beyond, to a fuller excellence which Aristotle was the first to call “moral” or “ethical” virtue. The man of moral virtue sees even the most challenging political task less in terms of what is beneficial to the rest of the city and more in terms of the opportunity the city provides for the development and expression of qualities such as he possesses. Moreover, he is aware that his political career, though it is usually the most engrossing part of his life, ought not to be regarded as simply the highest or most precious avenue for his pursuit of excellence. There are other high virtues—such as personal generosity, the tasteful endowment of works of art, truthful and perceptively witty conversation, and intimate friendship—which can be partaken of only to a limited extent in even the best politics, and which are often obstructed by such politics.

But even the life of the “perfect gentleman” is not free from tensions or serious puzzles. Which aspect of virtue is to have higher priority—Justice, or Pride? Can human beings be held responsible, and ought they feel guilty, for evil—or is everyone not always guided by his opinion that what he does is good? What is the relationship between pleasure or happiness, which all by nature seek, and the virtues, which seem to gleam most brightly when they involve stern sacrifice; above all, what cosmic or divine support is there for the moral life?

These are the impulses to wonderment, arising directly out of reflection on the actual experience of moral action, that open up the avenue that leads to the discovery of the superiority of the contemplative or philosophic life. It is the insistence on this superiority that most clearly and unambigulously marks the authentic classical conception of virtue. The precise meaning of “philosophy” is a matter of some controversy within the classical tradition. Philosophy sometimes becomes almost indistinguishable from theology. Or, then again, there may be retained a clear recollection of the figure of Socrates and the distinctive, restlessly questioning way of life he represents, with its requirement of an awesome independence or strength of soul. Such a life's inner strength and freedom can come to sight as the true fulfillment of the moral man's intimations of a life of god-like self-sufficiency. Wherever the genuine classical tradition still lives, there is some kind of agreement as to the supreme value of a life spent in meditation on the nature of the soul and of divinity; and there is insistence that this ranking be somehow reflected in a sound republic's solemn public self-affirmations.

THE MODERN RIVALS OF THE CLASSICS AND ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW PUBLIUS

The first thinker who broke with this Socratic tradition in a thorough and thoroughly self-conscious way seems to have been Machiavelli. In effect, Machiavelli agreed with at least the first stages in the classical theorists' critique of civic virtue. But he found their attempt to discover, within civic virtue, an immanent ascent to moral and contemplative virtue both implausible and riddled with unsolved new problems. Worst of all, he detected in this critique a significant source of the success of the Christian otherworldliness and the effeminate humility that allowed political life to be surrendered to petty tyrants. Machiavelli preached as a model the lupine, imperialistic Roman republic. The “virtue” (virtú) exhibited by the greatest Romans was the excellence of men who have learned to harness their emotions and mental talents in ruthless competition for security, riches, dominion, and—rarest but most gratifying—the promise of lasting glory. The “virtue” that pervades a whole society like the Roman is the institutional structuring of this vigorous competition—between rich and poor, priests and warriors, diverse great families and individuals—so as to maintain a veritable dynamo of acquisitive growth (see esp. Discourses on Livy Bk. I, chaps. 2-8, 16, 40, 52, and Bk. III, chap. 1).

Some of the thinkers whom it has become fashionable to speak of as “classical republicans” (e.g., Harrington, Neville, and Sydney) thought they could find in Machiavelli a powerful source of inspiration in the patriotic fight against priestly or theocratic rule and absolute monarchy or the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. They put together a rhetorically somewhat appealing combination: a Machiavellian virtú stripped of its ferocity, a relaxed version of Aristotle's political teaching, and the model of the Venetian republic. The theoretical unsoundness is illustrated by Harrington's attempt to prove that Machiavelli was wrong, on his own premises, in preferring the Roman over the Venetian republic, or in insisting that enmity between rich and poor, senate and plebs, is an essential aspect of a strong, “virtuous” republic (1977: 272-78; cf. Fink 1945: 37 n. 44 and Pocock 1975: 272ff., 328, 392-93).

Machiavelli's truly great and insightful successors (e.g., Locke, Montesquieu, and Hume), while understanding and accepting his critique of classical republicanism as well as Christianity, recoiled from the extremes of his positive alternative. They agreed that virtue was best conceived as something contrived and artificial, or at best only semi-“natural”: the guiding of passion by a reason which convincingly promises to gratify more intensely the strongest passions. Where they disagreed was in specifying what those passions were or what they could be molded into under the proper social conditioning and rational planning.

The most influential strain of post-Machiavellian political theory taught that human beings by nature incline or drift toward an anomic individuality. In that “state of nature” they are harried by necessity into different sorts of unreliable, competitive relationships haunted by economic scarcity and bedeviled by an imagination that incites to lust for domination and cruel forms of piety (see especially Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding Bk. I, chap. 3 and Two Treatises on Government Bk. I, secs. 56-59). Mankind's only hope—its “only Star and compass” (Two Treatises I, sec. 58)—is reason. Through the use of reason, desperate mankind can come to grasp the horror of its natural situation, and, in grasping or fully experiencing it, discover the single most powerful passion, which can serve as the Archimedean point for moral existence: the fear of painful death. Upon the foundation of this passion, and with a view to it, reason may begin to harness all the passions by constructing principles, rules, and habits that promote “comfortable preservation” (ibid. I, sec. 87).

Noteworthy among the tenets of what Locke called “Natural Law” or “Reason, which is that Law” (ibid. II, sec. 6) are: the obligation to respect the right or claim of all to private property, or the right to be protected in the unlimited peaceful accumulation of the instruments of material welfare created through mental and physical labor; the obligation to make and keep private contracts—especially the marriage contract, which stabilizes the otherwise fragile and shifting natural “family”; and the obligation to make and keep the “Social Compact,” thereby artificially creating the “supreme power” of government to enforce through the terror of punishment the “natural laws” of reason. The “mighty Leviathan” (ibid. II, sec. 98) thus created should have its limbs so separated and balanced in competition with one another that unchecked power cannot be accumulated in any part; and it should be dedicated to principles, such as “no taxation without representation” (ibid. II, sec. 142) that preserve as much as possible the dependence of government on the consent of the governed.

In accordance with these precautions, Locke proposes to remove from the political agenda and sphere the teaching of virtue and religion. Yet Locke knew well that his new liberal society would strongly if indirectly foster the development of a new, specific type of personality endowed with new, more truly rational “virtues.” Locke elaborated this side of his teaching not in his treatises on government but in a separate treatise (Some Thoughts Concerning Education) addressed to upper-class fathers (and mothers) concerned with the private, domestic education of their own children.

The major virtues which the Lockean political and educational scheme seeks to cultivate are well summed up by Montesquieu, the thinker whose authority is invoked more often than any other in the Federalist: “The spirit of commerce produces in men a certain sentiment of exact justice, opposed on the one hand to brigandage, but opposed also to those moral virtues which restrain one from negotiating for one's interests with rigidity, and that allow one to neglect one's interests for the sake of the interests of others” (Spirit of the Laws Bk. XX, chap. 2). And again: “The spirit of commerce carrys in its train the spirit of frugality, economy, moderation, work, prudence, tranquillity, order, and regulation” (Bk. V, chap. 6). Montesquieu adds that “in order to maintain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary that … this spirit reign alone, and that it not be crossed by another; that all the laws favor it …” (ibid.). While Montesquieu does find the commercial spirit existing in the ancient republics, he finds it there “crossed,” and hence seriously weakened, by the “virtue” that is the “principle,” the “modification of the soul” animating the ancient citizen.

Montesquieu argues that the virtue which animates a healthy civic republic is, properly speaking, a passionate, unreflective patriotism which for a time induces all individuals among the citizenry to subordinate or redirect their natural selfish energies for the sake of an austere, egalitarian sense of fraternity that must be enforced by a strict and censorious spirit of mutual watchfulness. Such virtue can secure the citizens against both internal and external oppression; but in a vivid passage, Montesquieu likens the admittedly awesome virtue of the republican city at its best to the order of a monastery—and thus lets us see the underlying fanaticism (Bk. V, chap. 2).

Hume, arguably the principal source for much of the new Publius's political science in the strict sense, leapt to embrace and promote the emerging commercial society with even greater alacrity than Montesquieu. But he rejected what he interpreted as both Locke's and Montesquieu's derivation of morality from constructions or discoveries of reason, serving selfish passion. Hume conceded that reason had to play an enormous role in transforming or educating the natural moral impulse (especially by liberating that impulse from the delusions and tyranny of piety). But no reasoning, in Hume's opinion, could deduce from purely egoistic passions a compelling social ethic. Now since Hume agreed that reason can only be the “slave” of passion, he was compelled to try to discover in the human heart a distinct passion or pleasure—a “moral sense,” “instinct,” or “sentiment”—that would explain mankind's evident moral proclivities. He identified that “sense” as a “humanity” or “sympathy” that gives each of us an empathetic stake in the ill or well being of all other human beings whose fates we witness or can imagine. The various workings of this peculiar hedonistic impulse, when served and illuminated by reason, constitute the moral “virtues.” Hume sometimes referred to these virtues or specific pleasures as ends, and on occasion even spoke of them as “constituting” our happiness. Moreover, in Hume's ethical writings thematic discussion of the life of the philosopher, as among the highest of human types, reemerges. But Hume stands in the final analysis at a very great distance from classical political and moral philosophy.

In Hume's exposition, virtue is in the main reduced to social virtue, and the latter is placed on a strictly hedonistic and utilitarian basis. Unquestionably, Hume's canon includes more than social virtues: he discusses such manifestations of self-esteem as “greatness of mind,” “noble pride and spirit,” and “magnanimity”—“sublime passions,” which Hume links to “that undisturbed philosophical tranquillity,” that “perpetual serenity and contentment” exhibited by Socrates (1955: 256-57). But these “sublime” characteristics, while not wholly neglected, recede into the shade in his presentation, becoming largely a matter of “taste.” Above all, Hume (like Montesquieu) blurs the crucial classical distinction between pride and vanity, reinterpreting pride as yet another manifestation of even the purest and strongest individual's inescapable dependence on his fellows (ibid. 276; cf. 266).

The ultimate source of Hume's new ranking and understanding of the virtues would seem to be Hume's own experience of the philosophic life. Hume was content to understand the philosopher as “transported with the same passions” as the non-philosopher (1963: 179, and 1955: 7-9). He gave serious attention to Platonism only insofar as it represented a teaching about the best way of life; and after due consideration he rejected that teaching because he saw its devotion to love of truth as dependent on an unjustifiable faith in some teleo-theology (“The Platonist,” and context, in 1963: 139ff.). That prop of faith removed, the “love of truth” in and of itself could no longer be seen as sustaining (A Treatise of Human Nature Bk. II, Part iii, chap. 19). In accord with this, Hume from the beginning to the end of his literary career frankly avowed his own “ruling passion” to be the “love of literary fame” (“My Life,” near the end, and Treatise, Advertisement). Because for Hume the philosophic life did not entail, as it did for Socrates, a “turning of the soul” away from the “cave” of commonsense life and that life's hopes and fears, it followed that the most self-conscious existence did not require or justify the longing for radical inner independence and detachment which could be said to be adumbrated in, and which therefore justified the preeminence of, the moral virtue of Greatness of Soul.

As for the truly important social virtues, chief among which is justice, these are to be valued mainly because of their usefulness in procuring society's happiness—understood as the peace and legally ordered individual liberty which brings security and prosperity (1985: 26, 41, 54-55, 468, 489; 1955: 183, 186-88, 192, 205, 210). Mankind is by nature animated by generous sentiments of “sympathy,” but in their spontaneous expression these are mostly short-lived, and reliable or lasting only within the narrow range of family and immediate benefactors. The great political virtues of justice, obedience, allegiance, and fidelity to promises or contracts are artificial. “Not supported by any original instinct of nature,” they are constructions of habit informed by reason reflecting on the chaotic natural condition of human society. Given that “every man is naturally impelled to extend his acquisitions as much as possible,” given that “the love of dominion is so strong in the breast of man,” a rational or truly just regime is one whose “particular checks and controls, provided by the constitution,” make it “the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good.” In an important sense, then, the laws of such a system have “little dependence on the humours and tempers of men.” Yet such a system does require men animated by a virtuous “zeal” in favor of it, based on their moral sense as directed by an unsentimental understanding of the nature of mankind. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the fragility of this nature's attachment to reason and law requires the cultivation in the populace of habits, customs, and traditions that will overlay and tame spontaneous nature. It is therefore imprudent, if not incorrect, to stress the universal and unalienable rights of individuals (except that of self-preservation), or to teach that the only legitimate foundation of government is the contractual consent of the governed—even though this is admittedly “the best and most sacred of any foundation of government.” (See 1955: secs. 3-4 and 5, Part 1; also 1985: 14-41, 362, 465-92, 494-95, 503-4, 646.)

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS' NEW ORDERING OF FUNDAMENTAL PRIORITIES

Doubtless the preceding does no more than highlight some keynotes in a long and complex history of theoretical controversy, but only if we keep some such synopsis squarely in view can we appreciate the ingredients that go together to make up the Papers' uneasy synthesis of predominantly, though not exclusively, modern political theory. As we saw at the outset, the Papers certainly speak, with respect and even reverence, of the need for virtue.¹¹ But once we have caught a glimpse of what classical republicanism, and its various rivals, meant by “virtue,” we begin to realize the extent to which there lies at the heart of the Federalist's version of republicianism an unclassical conception of both the nature and the status of virtue.

To begin with, it is easy to see that Publius depends less on virtue, and directs far less attention to cultivating it, than did the classical tradition. Witness the remarkable “moderation” of the Papers' principal tribute to virtue's role in the envisaged new system:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government. …

(55: 346)

One of the most revealing indications of Publius's new, Humean or Machiavellian, understanding is his remark that it is “the love of fame” which is “the ruling passion of the noblest minds” (72: 437). The noblest men, those who are presumably most familiar with moral virtue, are not governed by the love of virtue: even for these men of the highest caliber, virtue is at most a subordinate goal, and perhaps no more than a means to fame.¹² Consequently, a sound regime will be wary of trusting mainly to virtue for the direction and restraint of leaders:

The aim of every constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

(57: 350)

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. … This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate divisions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other. …

(51: 322; cf. 63: 383, 66: 407, 72: 438)

Publius is aware that “there are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty; but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils” (73: 441)—and these men are not exempt from the implications of Hamilton's remark on “the ruling passion of the noblest minds”; they too are to be understood as adhering to virtue out of a motive other than the love of virtue for itself.

This does not yet adequately expose, however, the full, radical character of Publius's position, and we must go farther: even though there exist a few paragons, and many lesser specimens of honorable men, who can be expected to adorn the halls of government and the walks of private life, Publius is inclined not to rank their virtue, or its fostering, among the ultimate ends of politics. This we may pronounce to be the most important respect in which Publius, like Hume, reveals himself an alien to classical republican thought. For the Federalist, virtue, when or insofar as it emerges in public life, represents for the most part an important instrument for fame, security, liberty, and self-government.

We can see the evidence for this reordering of priorities, and grasp more concretely in what the reordering consists, if we examine Publius's transformation in the meaning or content of both self-government and virtue. Let us consider first the change in the meaning of self-government.

THE NEW, EGALITARIAN BASIS OF “LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT”

For the classical tradition, self-government aspires to be a vehicle for the practice, and a means to the promotion, of the moral virtues. From this it follows that the clearest title to participate in rule belongs to those who demonstrate the most virtue or the most potential for virtue or the greatest concern for virtue: republics at their best tend away from democracy and toward aristocracy. True aristocrats ought not to serve the people in the sense of obeying them, but ought rather to aim at guiding them toward a more virtuous way of life. It may well be that in most actual situations prudence counsels the most virtuous to settle for a regime in which they share power with others and ratify their authority by continually gaining the consent of the governed (the “mixed regime”). Allowing the majority a significant voice may also be one important instrument of popular moral education. Requiring rulers to gain the consent of the governed is a mighty bulwark against tyranny and can in some circumstances contribute to the wiser selection of those most suited to rule or to be trained in ruling. Besides, the classics were well aware of the enormous practical difficulties in identifying the truly virtuous, and as a consequence agreed that those who claim or are held to be “gentlemen” cannot be unqualifiedly trusted to act like gentlemen. But they were even more leery of trusting to the unleisured and uneducated as the ultimate custodians of a people's aspirations. They therefore refused to concede that popular consent is the sole or even the preeminent source of legitimate political authority.

In contrast, the authors of the Federalist Papers assert that “the people are the only legitimate fountain of power” (49: 313; cf. 22: 146). What is more, the “genius of republican liberty” demands that government be “strictly” republican—“a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior” (37: 227; 39: 240-41). Since, for the Federalist, virtue is no longer a raison d'être of the political order, virtue ceases to bestow on its possessors a primary or indisputable title to rule. Individuals outstanding in their moral and political qualities gain authority only derivatively, by winning the favor of the populace—a feat they accomplish by demonstrating their efficacy in promoting popular liberties and prosperity. If virtue, in the classical sense, must be modified or compromised in order to perform this task, then so be it. Once in positions of authority, even rulers who are virtuous men are supposed to govern as the “servants” or “representatives”—not the “superiors” or “rulers”—of the mass of men. This basic, and rather radical, egalitarianism of the Federalist is explicitly derived from the “fundamental principles of the Revolution” (39: 240)—e.g., Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. In this latter famous document there is to be found hardly a word about virtue, but instead, a ringing proclamation of the equality of all men in the most important political respect, in respect to rights or liberties.¹³

THE NEW MEANING OF VIRTUE

Regarding the content of virtue or the virtues, one may circumscribe Publius's departure from the classical tradition by saying that in the Federalist the image of statemanship and of citizenship has been disencumbered (or disemboweled) of much of the military spirit, aristocratic pride, reverence, love of manly nobility or beauty, and austere self-restraint exhibited by Plutarch's heroes on Aristotle's gentlemen. As in Hume's Enquiry, the old cardinal virtues are not jettisoned, but they are infused with a new spirit and expressed in a new practice.

The authors of the Federalist remain almost totally silent on awe toward the divine, and respect for the contemplative life that claims to be the closest to the divine. They use the term “philosophic spirit” to mean “softness” of manners, “mutual amity and concord” (6: 56). While on one occasion Madison echoes the classical conception of authentic philosophers as extraordinarily rare, rational beings, we find the same Madison, a few pages later, judging Socrates to have been on the same rough level of political trustworthiness as other Athenian citizens who made up “the mob” (49: 315; 55: 342).

We hear Publius remark repeatedly on the value of “moderation”: but the moderation in question is not so much a divine or noble control over selfishness and carnal appetite as it is a calm and prudent calculation that serves to temper fanaticism—including the fanaticism of moral and religious zeal (see—in addition to 3: 45, 11: 91, 37: 224, 43: 280, 78: 470, and 85: 522—the emphatic references to moderation at the beginning and end of the Federalist; 1: 34 and 85: 527).

It is this same enlightened and sober self-interest, more than a reverence for the sancity of tradition, that Publius counts on to sustain the citizenry's respect for law (though in this key respect Publius departs less radically from classical republicanism than does Jefferson: the only explicit disagreement with Jefferson arises around precisely this question of the value of reverence for the law—25: 167 and 49: 313-17).

The Founders do indeed rely on “the vigilant and manly spirit which animates the people of America” as the ultimate bulwark against injustice (57: 353; cf. 28: 180). But the hope and expectation is that for the mass of citizens intense, public-spirited political involvement will be rare, and aimed at restricted and temporary goals. Publius speaks with emphasis of “that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government” (39: 240); but he also locates the distinctive superiority of the American over the classical regime in the American use of representative government over a large nation—thereby making possible “the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity, from any share in” government (63: 387—Madison's italics). The “great body of the people” are to participate, but only indirectly and infrequently, through elections and jury duty; more often than not, they will in their electoral behavior act so as to support particular, partisan factions (cf. Epstein 1984: 195-97). For Publius (implicitly departing to some extent, in this critical respect, from Jefferson) refuses to countenance placing any check, in the name of virtue, on a rampant “avarice” and avidity for competitive business, issuing in the unlimited growth of material prosperity and even luxury:

The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate all the channels of industry and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer—all orders of men look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils.

(12: 91)

This means to say that the manly spirit we have observed Publius ascribing to the future populace is misunderstood if it is conceived mainly as an attribute of the revolutionary warrior. Hamilton's elaborate discussion of military service, in nos. 24-29 and 46, treats such service as an unfortunate necessity rather than as the crucial moral training ground for courage, solidarity, and discipline—the light in which the citizen army was viewed in the Aristotelian tradition, and in which it continued to be viewed by some contemporary Americans (see esp. 29: 184-85). American manliness will express itself more characteristically in an “adventurous” entrepreneurship “which distinguishes the commercial character of America,” and “has already excited uneasy sensations in … Europe”: “the industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuit of gain and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was the true condition of the people of those [ancient] republics” (7: 63, 8: 69, 11: 85 and 88).

The praise Publius bestows on the commercial spirit, and his willingness to truncate virtue in the name of that spirit, enable us to understand better what the Federalist means by the “security” and “repose and confidence of mind” which is to be put into the balance against participation in self-government. The repose envisioned is not one of leisure, and it is not to be confined to some elite. What is intended is a headlong pursuit of investment opportunities and an economic growth that will penetrate every corner of the country. The security aimed at is security not only of the person but of the “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” (10: 78); the property to be protected is not the relatively unchanging family holdings celebrated in Plutarch, Plato, and Aristotle, but rather property understood as capital, diffused as widely as possible. (On equal access to property, cf. Noah Webster, as quoted in Storing 1981, vol. 1: 46 and Hume 1985: 265-66 and 277-78.)

The qualities the Founders encourage or hope will develop in the populace will naturally be exemplified in that populace's chosen leaders. The classical tradition had tended to seek leaders especially among those landed aristocrats who lived near the city, and whose stable economic base made possible a contempt for business and a respect for a life of private leisure and public service. The Federalist, in contrast, looks to “the learned profession” (lawyers) and merchants, the latter of whom it calls “the natural patrons and friends” of the manufacturers or craftsmen (35: 214-15). This does not mean that Publius thinks Amerca can get along without some statesmen of rare strengths—unusual “fortitude” of spirit, long-range ambition, and far-sighted “wisdom” (55: 346, 57: 350-51, 64: 391 and 396, 65: 398, 68: 414). On the whole, the Federalist seems to think that such men will arise spontaneously, attracted or animated by the fame and power the new Constitution will bestow on participants in national government. Certainly Publius has little to say about special efforts of cultivation, education, and encouragement.¹⁴ Yet at the same time, Publius warns against the availability of “enlightened statesmen” (10: 80). Moreover, as we have seen, Publius is willing to raise doubts in public as to whether statesmen can be trusted—though in this respect, to be sure, the Federalists are not nearly so extreme (or anti-classical) as their opponents, the Anti-Federalists.

THE UNDERLYING AND PROBLEMATIC, CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERTY AND OF HUMAN NATURE

Having arrived at this point, we are in a position to take a more comprehensive view of the scope, and the ambiguity, of the conception of liberty that pervades the Federalist. For the word “liberty” as Publius uses it often seems to serve as an encompassing term for the ultimate political good. Indeed, as we have seen, liberty is the theme that elicits from Publius sentiments which heark back most clearly to the classics. If the Federalist Papers do not look to virtue as the end of free government, they do tend to treat liberty as an end and as a kind of virtue. Yet as appears even in the most elevated passages we quoted at the beginning, liberty includes much more than noble participation in government. Liberty is twofold: it comprises both political rights and “private” rights, both “public” and “personal” liberty. And the private or personal aspect of liberty includes not only security of person, property, opinion, and religious persuasion, it includes as well the liberty to remain in a private station, the right to refuse most of the burdens and responsibilities of republicanism.

The resonant word “liberty” thus bridges the gulf, or mutes the tension, between the two distinct components of good government. As we have seen (above), the authors of the Federalist Papers on one important occasion (37: 226-27) place that tension squarely before the reader: but most of the time they remain on the level of appeals to rights and to liberty without specifying whether they have in mind principally the political, or the private, dimension of freedom. They thereby avoid repeatedly stirring up the question as to just where the balance was struck, in the constitution, between protection of private goods and the promotion of active, public-spirited citizenship and leadership. This is not to say that they hide the question, or the answer: while it is true that Publius is reluctant to make republican government into a mere means to safety or material well-being, it is equally true that he speaks as if the longing for republican government were, in the final analysis, neither as pressing nor as deeply rooted as the need for the protection of life, private property, and individual independence.

The most telling of such testimonies are to be found in Publius's rare references to nature and to ultimate first principles. “Why has government been instituted at all?” asks Hamilton, and then replies: “because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint” (15: 110). Self-government is not instituted for its own sake, but in order to “constrain” the natural bent of the passions. “The principal purposes to be answered by union,” the Federalist affirms, “are these—the common defense … ; the preservation of the public peace … ; the regulation of commerce … the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries” (23: 153). Madison in the well-known Tenth Federalist voices the universal principle that dictates this agenda when he defines “the first object of government” as the protection” of the “faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate” (10: 78).

Publius subsequently enlarges our vision of the foundations upon which he believes government rests by referring to the “social compact,” the “first principles” of which are “personal security and private rights” (44: 282). While it may be true that “government is instituted no less for the protection of property than of the persons of individuals” (54: 339), it is more accurate to say that property is not an end in itself: “the transcendent law of nature and nature's God,” which Publius links to (but does not identify with) “the great principle of self-preservation,” declares “that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed” (43: 279; cf. 40: 253 and 14: 104). The possible ambiguity in this last, weighty remark has been noted (Diamond 1971: 62): what does Publius mean by “happiness” such that he speaks of it as an ultimate goal of politics (and not just of each individual), a goal distinct from safety (contrast Spirit of the Laws, Bk. XXVI chap. 23)? Does happiness imply or require republican liberty, “safety in the republican sense” (70: 424, 77: 464 cf. 70: 430)? If or to the extent that it does, it would seem that only a republican form of government is strictly in accordance with “the transcendent law of nature.” But this Publius never says. He seems much more certain that republican government is dictated by the “genius of the American people,” and even by the “fundamental principles of the revolution,” than that it is dictated by nature or natural law.

What our authors have in mind when they speak of natural law and the social compact becomes a bit clearer when, in affirming that “justice is the end of government,” Publius indicates that justice must be understood in the light of the notion of a “state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger” (51: 324-25); this “anarchy” which is man's natural proclivity antedates “civil society,” though not all society, and reveals the fundamental norm which guides and governs the establishment of civility or law and order—“that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government” (28: 180). More generally, it would seem that reflection on the “state of nature” reveals what the Federalist calls the “natural rights” from which the laws of nature are deduced; “some” of these rights “the people must cede” when they enter into the social compact, but others, it would appear, remain inalienable and as such constitute the anchor of the Federalist Papers' moral thought. Now if the social compact and natural law are to be understood as derived from, and in service to, natural rights, and if these latter are most visible in a pre-civil state of nature, then it would seem to follow that the liberty whose protection is the original and deepest purpose of government is a liberty that is essentially personal or private, not to say selfish. Where then does this leave the status of political liberty, or “safety in a republican sense”? What basis is there in nature—that is, in the non-artificial and not merely imagined or invented needs of man—for honoring republicanism as something more than an instrument for the personal comfort and security of each citizen? To enlarge the question, in precisely what sense is republican government noble by nature, and not merely by conventional belief or Anglo-American tradition?

CONCLUSION

Let me try to formulate as precisely and succinctly as possible the fundamental dilemma or difficulty whose contours have become more and more visible. The Revolution, and the moral and intellectual challenges involved in the struggle for the Constitution, imbued men like Hamilton and Madison with an experience of respect or reverence—for an awakened, spirited citizenry, for leaders like themselves and above all like Washington, for the noble satisfactions of republican political life. This experience gave them a sense of kinship with the heroic ideals portrayed by Plutarch, ideals still available in a living if embattled tradition. But for all this, the authors of the Federalist Papers remained under the tutelage of modern political philosophy. And that philosophy, in all its competing forms, was united in showing the dubiousness and even the danger of the pre-modern attempt to interpret and moderate civic virtue through a teaching about the mixed regime, aristocratic pride, religious devotion, and an elevated or pious image of the philosophic life. Such an attempt, it was argued, required in one way or another the repression of humanity's natural quest for security, material prosperity, and diverse personal tastes and enjoyments. Yet the authors of the Papers cannot part with their conviction as to the nobility of republican self-government. What in their theorizing or in the theorizing of their chief sources can provide a consistent foundation for this conviction? Or does the American regime grow out of a perspective riven by a crucial, unanswered question? Is the richness of the American tradition due in part to the presence, in its very roots, of this unsettled question?

We get an indication, it seems to me, of how to pursue this question further when we ask which of the modern philosophers elaborates principles which seem closest to Publius's most fundamental theoretical reflections. While the sober reasonableness of Hume's political economy evidently informs many pages of the Federalist, it is the language of Locke that Publius employs when he adverts to the ultimate questions. Publius speaks, not of “the moral sense” or “sympathy,” but of individual rights, rooted in a state of nature and grounding a social compact—of rights which justify a potential for revolution that Hume found unsettling. It would seem that Publius, following Locke, tries to find the surest ground of human dignity in a natural, competitive self-assertion that is susceptible to regulation not so much by “sentiment” and custom as by “reason” embodied in law. Whether the rational “pursuit of happiness” (as Locke called it) of a rather feisty and self-assertive being can in fact provide a compelling foundation for a noble conception of mankind and of politics; or whether the logic of Publius's argument does not compel him, in the final analysis, reluctantly or unwittingly, to subordinate the high, as he conceives it, to the low—these are the great questions which lead us to a renewed study of Locke's full articulation and defense of the Federalist's most basic presuppositions.

Notes

1. The classic summary statement is Corwin's (1965), which draws heavily on the Carlyle brothers (1903-36), as well as on Becker (1942). For the best presentaton as regards the American Founding, see McLaughlin (1961), esp. pp. 23-24, 66-68, 100, 107-109, 112-13; and also McIlwain (1924).

2. The seminal application of a Marxist or quasi-Marxist analysis to the Founders themselves is of course Beard (1966); his methods and conclusions were much refined by successors (see McDonald 1965, and the exchange between McDonald and Main 1960). The most intelligent Marxist approaches to political philosophers of the Enlightenment are Macpherson (1962) and, rather less impressive, Althusser (1960). A moderate version or revision of the Weber thesis is found in Troeltsch (1976, esp. pp. 624-25, 644ff., and 894 n. 344), when taken in conjunction with Tawney (1926). Very recently, John P. Diggins (1984), in a book conceived as “a Niebuhrian corrective to the pretensions of American virtue” (p. 13), has revived a version of the Weberian thesis. But the attempt to find in Locke a belief in original sin, and the identification of Locke's fundamental psychological category of “uneasiness” with a Calvinist notion of “guilt,” seems to me to find no support in the texts of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding to which Diggins refers (366 n. 3, 369-70 n. 39); and the claim that “sin” is a major theme of the Federalist Diggins himself seems to characterize as speculative or impressionistic, lacking firm textual evidence (67-68, 76-81).

3. At the center of this scholarly movement is the work of Pocock (1975), which contributed to and in turn draws heavily on Bailyn (1967: esp. viii and 25-36) and Wood (1972: esp. 11-28, 49-70, 84, 91-97, 114-24, 224-25, 236-37, 416-29, 467, 492, 499-500, 609-12). See also Banning (1978), and, for a survey of the literature, Shalhope (1982). Pocock presents the Country or classical republican ideology as in a kind of dialectical struggle with an opposing Court or Commercial ideology; but because he refuses to credit Locke with much influence even on the latter, Pocock is led to the conclusion that the “Court ideology … supplied neither polity nor personality with a coherent moral structure” (1975: 467; cf. 427ff., 434, 440, 488, 525, 550). Besides, in the American context, he claims, there was practically no competition: the Country ideology “ran riot” (1972: 123, cf. 120 and 1975: 467, 546); even Federalist thought is in crucial respects Aristotelean and “medieval rather than Lockean” (1975: 518, 526-27, 546).

4. “Cato's Letters” indeed sings paeans to Roman virtue, but the “virtue” the new Cato admires most is the Roman people's punitive zeal and suspicious distrust of claims to personal virtue in statesmen: “Generosity, Self-denial, and private and personal Virtues, are in Politicks but mere Names, or rather Cant-words, that go for nothing with wise Men, though they may cheat the Vulgar” (#11; cf. nos. 31, 33, 39, 40, 61, 63, 75, 87 in 1755, vol. 1: 72, 239, 260; vol. 2: 43-50, 52-53, 236, 258; vol. 3: 78, 176). He was “a great Philosopher” who called “the State of Nature, a State of War”; for it is owing “more to the Necessities of Men, rather than to their inclinations, that they have put themselves under the Restraint of Laws,” or created “the Mutual Contract” (#33 in vol. 1: 256-57). “The security of their Persons and Property” is the people's “highest aim”; and “Publick spirit,” which includes “social virtues” of a kind, is defined as whatever contributes to “maintaining the People in Liberty, Plenty, Ease, and Security,” a condition where they “think it safe and advantageous to venture large Stocks in Trade and Industry, and do not lock their money up in Chests” (nos. 1, 11, 12, 20, 24, 35 in vol. 1: 15-19, 66-67, 74-75, 131-32, 178; 2: 12-13).

5. Despite his aim of elevating the significance of the “Commonwealthmen” at the expense of the Enlightenment philosophers, Bailyn cannot help but repeatedly reveal evidence for the massive and determining influence of Locke on these very pamphleteers (1967: 27, 28, 30, 36, 38n. 20, 40n.22, 43, 45, 58-59, 150). Similarly, Dunn's attempt (1969) to disprove the influence of Locke on America collapses under the weight of the contrary evidence he assembles and then tries, perversely, to explain away; as Hamowy remarks (1980: 505), “if anything can be concluded from Dunn's essay, it is that—at least during the first half of the eighteenth century—the Lockean perspective on government and revolution was so commonplace that little if any intellectual debate surrounded it.” Wood's questioning of Locke's influence is, all too characteristically, rather wavering and hard to pin down (1972: 8, 14, 29, 48, 62, 151, 162, 219, 283-84, 600-601, 607).

6. To be sure, Pocock and Wood are at best half-hearted in their attempts to leave behind the reduction of political thought to economic or social class-ideology (see esp. Wood 1972: 625-27; Pocock 1971: 36-37, as well as 1972: 122 and 1975: vii, 507; cf. the comments of Zvesper 1977: 11-12, 190n.20). Moreover, as Diggins has shown in his witty and incisive critique (1984: 353-65), the Wittgensteinian or “contextualist” treatment of the “language games” (Pocock 1971: 12) of the Founders is just as unsympathetic to the Founders' claims to truth, just as unwilling to engage the Founders' arguments with serious respect, as the treatment accorded the Founders by reductionist historians under the spell of Marx or Beard. Yet Diggins's own attempt at an alternative conception of the relation between what he calls “word” and “deed” can hardly be considered satisfactory: the unclarity grows out of an inadequate recognition of the enormous inequality, the disparity in capacity for theoretical independence and insight, among political “thinkers” (1984: 12-13, 19, 85-99, 106).

7. Hamowy 1979 and 1980; Epstein 1984: 203n.17; Diggins 1984: 9, 37, 49, 53-54, 60ff., 98, 165-67 (on the true character of Witherspoon's influence), 372n. 14. Diggins rather characteristically goes overboard, however, when he claims that for Hume “people are passive and uncreative … possession by any means, even force and fraud, is self-legitimating …” and says that Hume has “no concern for man's rightful relation to authority … no esteem for government as a just institution” (pp. 53-54).

8. References to the Federalist Papers will be by paper number, followed by a colon and the page numbers of Rossiter's edition (1961).

9. I owe to Epstein (1984: esp. p. 8 and chap. 4) my understanding of no. 37's importance as a kind of fulcrum of the work. My interpretation differs from his inasmuch as I doubt that for Publius “the fundamental meaning of liberty is … ‘political liberty,’ as distinguished from ‘private liberty’ or ‘civil liberty’” (p. 147; a formulation I find more congenial is given on p. 68). It seems to me that Epstein goes too far in assimilating Publius's conception of human nature to that of Aristotle (pp. 79, 124), and does not bring out clearly enough the degree to which the tensions articulated in no. 37 are left unresolved. On the other hand, it seems to me that Diamond (1971: esp. Part 3) has gone somewhat too far in the opposite direction, stressing too little the reservations or qualifications Publius places on the political theory he draws from Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu. Erler (1981) takes this tendency to a greater extreme, although in doing so he forcefully underlines the most Lockean features of the Federalist.

10. The movement of thought is presented most vividly in Plato's dialogue The Laws, esp. Bks. 1-3 and 7 (for fuller discussion, see Pangle 1979: 379ff.); the same movement can be seen in a less dramatic form in Aristotle's Politics, Bk. 7, chaps. 1-3, and in the unfolding of Thucydides' history. In the summary that follows, I try to dispel the misunderstandings of Classical thought that flow from an uncritical acceptance of Hannah Arendt's extremely influential recapitulation—the key source, Pocock indicates, of his conception of “classical republicanism” (1975: 550) and a continuing source of guidance for Diggins (1984: 62-3) and others.

11. Cf. 57: 351, 64: 391, and Madison's speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 20, 1788, in Eliot 1968, vol. 3: 536-37. Cf. Zvesper 1977: 27-28, Storing 1976: 238-40 and 1981, vol. 1: 42-43. It seems to me that in Zvesper's more recent, and generally illuminating, essay on Madison he goes too far in claiming that “Madison the Federalist had tried to associate republican dependence on the people with the absence of popular virtue,” or in speaking of Madison's “rejection,” as a Federalist, of “the necessity for republican virtue.” See 1984: 251-52 (my italics). Similar overstatements characterize Diggins 1984: 52-53, 68, 164, 319.

12. Douglas Adair's thought-provoking discussion, in the essay that gives the title to his posthumously-assembled book (1974), suffers from an inadequate grasp of the distinction between the Machiavellian and the classical understanding of the motivation of fame and its moral significance—as is revealed by a careful inspection of the classical and Christian sources he cites in his notes.

13. It is true that this equality in principle does not translate into anything like unqualified equality at any of the stages of the political process. The Federalist is far from clear on this matter, but it would seem (cf. Madison's letter to Jefferson of February 4, 1790, in Meyers 1973: 233) that after a “people” has been established by a presumed unanimous consent, or after each inhabitant has signaled consent, by accepting or refusing the right to emigrate, the choice of a form of government and of governmental representatives devolves not on all, but only on “the great body of the people.” All are understood, it appears, to have agreed to those limitations on the right to vote which may plausibly be said to help insure sensible representation of every “inhabitant.” At the time of the Founding many—including the mentally incompetent, convicted criminals, resident aliens, citizens failing to pay their taxes, register, or meet certain other residency, property, and educational requirements, children and dependents (including women)—were generally considered properly disenfranchised. The final say in this matter is evidently considered a matter of prudence as well as strict right, and is left up to the several states by the Constitution. Yet as regards the status of blacks in southern states (as Justice Curtis pointed out in dissent in the Dred Scott decision, blacks were voting citizens at the time of the Founding in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina) the authors of the Federalist cannot refrain from expressing some revulsion at the compromise they were forced to enter into in order to secure the consent of the white majority in the south. “It is admitted,” Publius gravely declares, “that if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the Negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants” (54: 337). As for the situation of women, see James Wilson's rather uncomfortable attempt to face the issue in 1930: 208-14—the only such sustained attempt I have found among the public utterances of the Founders.

14. It must be borne in mind, of course, that in the background of the Federalist's description of the future nation is the assumption that America is to remain a federal republic—with the opportunities for participation in significant local government that this implies. Yet it is truly remarkable how little the Founders refer to this higher purpose of federalism in their very lengthy discussins of the topic in either the Federalist or the Constitutional Convention. For interpretative surveys of the chief discussions of liberty in the other writings of Madison and Hamilton, see Landi 1976: 74-75 and Flaumenhauft 1976: 149-51.

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