Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
state, did the money economy rise to fresh political consciousness, and
then it joined heartily with the new liberalism in an attack upon the
centralized powers of the political state.
The philosophy of this new liberalism was derived largely from two
notable thinkers of the preceding century, Harrington and Locke,
supplemented later by Adam Smith. The influence of the _Oceana_ upon
later thinkers was profound. In grasping and applying the principle of
the economic interpretation of history Harrington laid the foundation
of modern political theory. The true source of political power, he
asserted, is economic power--“empire follows the balance of property.”
The form of government in a given country, whether monarchical,
aristocratic, or democratic, according to the doctrine of economic
determinism, depends upon the ownership of land, whether vested
largely in one, in a minority, or in many. This primary economic power
is modified, however, by the presence in every society of a natural
aristocracy; the authority of character and ability imposes a natural
leadership on those less capable, and disturbs the simple economics
of the situation. Because of the resulting clash of interests,
political stability can be secured only by a judiciously calculated
system of checks; and the system which Harrington elaborated provided
for a bicameral legislature--the aristocratic branch proposing and
debating, and the democratic branch resolving--rotation in office,
and the ballot, to the end that there should be a government of laws
and not of men. His ideal was rulership by the best and wisest under
well-considered laws, circumscribed by a written constitution.
Locke followed Harrington in founding his political theory upon
economics, but he gave to it a characteristically middle-class
interpretation. Harrington had been primarily concerned with a land
economy; Locke was to become unconsciously a spokesman of a money
economy. The persistent problem of that economy was the security of
private property against sequestration, and the ultimate effect of
Locke’s teachings was to secure and strengthen the rights of property
in the state. In basing his doctrine of property ownership upon labor,
he prepared the way for a conception of economic power dissociated
from land. In the universal communism which marks the state of nature,
he argued, private property rights result from labor bestowed, and
are ethically and socially valid. But in such a state of nature, the
possession and enjoyment of property thus detached from the communal
whole are at constant hazards. “The great and chief end, therefore, of
men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government,
is the preservation of their property.”[292] If such was the original
purpose for which government was instituted among men, it follows that
government must regard property rights with particular tenderness;
for if the state prove untrustworthy, the original compact upon
which it was erected is dissolved, and society returns to a state of
nature. Locke therefore went far in asserting the inviolable rights of
property, laying it down as a guiding principle that the sovereign in
time of war may lawfully enforce conscription upon the bodies and lives
of his subjects, but not upon their property. “The supreme power cannot
take from any man any part of his property without his own consent,”
for “to invade the fundamental law of property” is to subvert “the end
of government.”[293] In thus asserting the sacredness of property,
Locke laid the foundation of the new philosophy of capitalism.
As English capitalism grew stronger it began to envisage more
critically the fundamental problem of the powers and functions of the
political state. A state controlled by the landed interests, given to
imposing vexatious restrictions upon trade, could not answer its needs;
freedom rather than regulation was requisite to healthy development.
From the Physiocratic teachings had come the new conception that
economic well-being cannot be imposed from above by governmental
paternalism, but results from untrammeled individual enterprise. The
great concern of government should be to assist and not hamper industry
and trade; political policies should follow and serve commercial
interests. Thus was provided the background from which emerged
_The Wealth of Nations_, the declaration of independence of modern
capitalism. Adam Smith completed the work of Locke, and gave definite
form to the middle-class liberalism of eighteenth-century England, a
liberalism that in the pursuit of commercial freedom found it desirable
to limit the powers of the state. The Tory state had been centralized
and paternal, the capitalistic state was to be reduced to the position
of umpire between competitors. The net results, thus, of two hundred
years of English middle-class struggle to free its economic ambitions
from governmental restrictions was the conception of the social,
political, and economic sufficiency of _laissez faire_. “Let alone” had
been erected into a fetish.
In France, on the other hand, the economic interpretation of history
dominated political thinking far less than in England, and the liberal
movement owed more to a group of intellectuals than to the middle
class. The French leaders were a remarkable group, far removed in
temper from Harrington and Locke and Adam Smith. The Physiocrats were
agrarians and the romantics were humanitarians. They followed the path
of logic to broad principles. As leadership passed from Montesquieu to
Rousseau, French liberalism abandoned the cautious historical appeal,
and turned to generalization that carried far beyond liberalism. The
Rousseau school became advanced radicals, aiming at the regeneration
of society as a whole, seeking political justice by a universal appeal
to reason. This explains the breadth and suggestiveness of their
thinking, as well as the smallness of their immediate achievement. In
seeking much they overreached accomplishment, for they had behind them
no disciplined, class-conscious group, pursuing definite ends. But in
outrunning their own time, they became leaders of later times; and the
unfulfilled program of Rousseau carried over to become the inspiration
of later humanitarianism.
The creative impulse of French romantic philosophy was a passionate
social idealism. A disciple of Locke, Rousseau went further than
his master and translated politics and economics into sociology.
That a juster, more wholesome social order should take the place of
the existing obsolete system; that reason and not interests should
determine social institutions; that the ultimate ends to be sought were
universal liberty, equality, and fraternity--such in brief were the
main conceptions of his philosophy. “Regard for the general good” must
be accepted as the sole test of laws and institutions. He attacked the
problem by way of psychology, essaying a revaluation of human nature.
Incalculable harm had been done, and grave mistakes made, Rousseau
believed, by the old slanderous interpretation; to assume that every
man is a knave, governed solely by self-interest, was an assumption
contrary to fact. It was a generalization deduced from certain acquired
characteristics. If in a competitive society men prove to be selfish,
ambitious of power and distinction, brutal in seeking egoistic ends,
the blame attaches to a vicious social system that has debased them
from their natural state. In a state of nature men are kindly,
rational, sociable; but in society the great rewards fall to the
self-seeking. A ruthless social order is forever perverting the natural
man; whereas if social rewards were bestowed on the social-minded,
the innate sense of justice would speedily modify and control the
impulse to egoism. The solution of the vexing social problem, Rousseau
concluded, lay in a return to a state of nature, where under the
determining influence of wholesome environment the individual should
develop naturally, unperverted by false standards and unjust rewards.
French radicalism, then, was driving in the same direction with English
liberalism, but it went much further. Both desired a loosening of the
machinery of centralized power as represented by the political state;
but whereas English liberalism protested against a paternalism that
diminished its profits, French radicalism struck at the principle
of centralization. Political institutions it regarded as artificial
agencies for the purposes of exploitation--the state was little more
than a tax machine; whereas the living source and wellspring of every
true civilization is social custom, voluntary association, free
exchange. The root of French radicalism was anarchistic, and its ideal
was an agrarian society of free-holders. It would sweep away the long
accumulated mass of prescriptive rights, the dead hand of the past,
and encourage free men to create a new society that should have as
its sole end and justification, the common well-being. A pronounced
individualism characterized both movements, French and English; but
in the one case it was humanitarian, appealing to reason and seeking
social justice, in the other it was self-seeking, founded on the right
of exploitation, and looking toward capitalism.
During the period with which we are concerned, American thought, become
militantly self-conscious but still vague and inchoate touching any
ultimate program, drew inspiration from both sources; but the deeper,
controlling influence came finally to be English rather than French.
The common doctrine of decentralization fitted American conditions,
but to many Americans decentralization, whether social or political,
had proved undesirable. The common doctrine of liberty accorded with
the passions released by the Revolution, but the French humanitarian
conceptions of equality and fraternity found little response in a
middle-class, competitive world. On the contrary, the English doctrine
of economic individualism made universal appeal. In presence of vast,
unpreëmpted resources, the right of every man to preëmpt and exploit
what he would, was synonymous with individual liberty. Any government
which should endeavor to limit such exploitation would be bitterly
assailed; and if the small man were free to enjoy his petty privilege,
the greater interests might preëmpt unchallenged. The total influence
of old-world liberalism upon the America of post-war days was,
therefore, favorable to capitalistic development and hostile to social
democracy. Until the early years of the nineties the democratic spirit
of French radicalism was little understood in America, and the field
remained free to the English middle-class philosophy, which appealed
equally to the agrarian and the capitalistic groups.
II • The Political Situation
Against this background of ideas, the political tactics of the year
1787 are sufficiently comprehensible. Two major problems had been
settled by the war, namely, that henceforth the exploitation of America
was to remain the prerogative of Americans, and that in the new country
there was no place for a king or a titled aristocracy. But with these
preliminaries settled, the problem remained to determine the form and
powers of a national government. Should that government be entrusted
with coercive sovereignty, or should it remain the titular head of
confederated sovereign commonwealths? The latter solution had been
accepted during the period of war, and in proposing abolition of the
Articles of Confederation and the substitution of a new instrument, the
burden of proof fell upon the advocates of the new. How the problem
was met and the solution achieved by a skillful minority in face of
a hostile majority is a suggestive lesson in political strategy. It