Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
of the time. Unfortunate circumstances attended the publication of
the works. The _Defence of the Constitution_ appeared at the moment
when newspaper accounts of the absurd dress in which he appeared at
the Court of St. James’s were provoking republican jests; and the
_Discourses on Davila_ came out in the _Gazette of the United States_,
when the country was buzzing about his childish fondness for titles and
ceremonies. It was impolitic for Adams to publish in the _Gazette_,
a virulently Federalistic sheet and anathema to all liberals. His
unpopular theories could not fail to arouse republican antagonism when
set over against such seeming commentary as this:
_Take away thrones and crowns from among men and there will
soon be an end of all dominion and justice._ There must be some
adventitious properties infused into the government to give it
energy and spirit, or the selfish, turbulent passions of men can
never be controlled. This has occasioned that artificial splendor
and dignity that are to be found in the courts of many nations. The
people of the United States may probably be induced to regard and
obey the laws without requiring the experiment of courts and titled
monarchs. In proportion as we become populous and wealthy must the
tone of the government be strengthened.[323]
The unfortunate effect of _Davila_ upon a highly wrought public opinion
Adams himself records: “the rage and fury of the Jacobinical journals
against these discourses, increased as they proceeded, intimidated the
printer, John Fenno, and convinced me, that to proceed would do more
hurt than good. I therefore broke off abruptly.”[324] But the mischief
to his reputation had been done; henceforth Adams was popularly
regarded as anti-republican. Debating the nature of aristocracy in the
New York Constitutional Convention, one of the speakers said, “I would
refer the gentleman for a definition of it to the Hon. John Adams, one
of our natural aristocrats.” Madison went so far as to charge that he
was secretly a monarchist. The charge was absurd, as any examination of
his political theory will convince. “It is a fixed principle with me,”
he wrote to Samuel Adams in 1790, “that all good government is and must
be republican.” But that he advocated a system of government hostile to
agrarianism, that he was bitterly antagonistic to French Jacobinism
and all its works, is apparent to the most casual reader. He was a
realist of the seventeenth-century school of English republicanism,
attacking what he regarded as the delirium of democracy, appealing to
experience in answer to abstract theory.
Adams erected his political system upon what he called “self-evident
truths.” He went to the root of the matter and directed his inquiry
into the validity of the humanitarian psychology which asserted that
men are good by nature, and may be trusted to deal justly with their
fellows. He appealed to the whole unhappy record of past misrule to
disprove the thesis. Instead of discovering in the average man a
kindly, rational being--as Jefferson professed to discover--Adams
found quite the contrary; and he summoned a host of historians and
philosophers to witness that Machiavelli was right in his contention
that “those who have written on civil government lay it down as a
first principle ... that whoever would found a state, and make proper
laws for the government of it, must presume that all men are bad by
nature; that they will not fail to show that natural depravity of heart
whenever they have a fair opportunity.”[325] In further substantiation
of this fact he examined the history of governments past and present,
and he found everywhere testimony to the truth that the mass of men are
naturally indolent, selfish, given to luxury, shortsighted, jealous,
tending to faction and all mischievous intrigue. Never does he find
them given to virtue, choosing wisdom, seeking justice. They cannot
endure that others should be superior in virtue, or rank, or power;
but driven by ambition they strive to pull down their superiors in
order themselves to rise. The men in any society who possess sufficient
virtue to set justice above self-interest, are few and count for little
in the scale against the selfish many.[326]
This Calvinistic doctrine that “human nature is not fit to be
trusted,” and that “men are never good but through necessity,” being
accepted--and John Adams was as clearly satisfied of its truth as
“of any demonstration of Euclid”--he proceeded to translate it
into political terms, and examine the bearing of it upon systems
of government. At once a second fallacy of the humanitarian school
emerged--men are impelled not by ideals but by needs, not by reason,
as Godwin argued, but by the desire for goods. In a social state the
natural selfishness of human nature impels to economic aggression.
Underneath the turbulent unrest which threatens every government is
economic ambition. This is the rock on which all schemes of social
justice founder--a rock which every sound political thinker will chart
and recognize as a danger reef. Economics and biology provide the major
social drives. “That the first want of every man is his dinner and the
second want his girl were truths well known ... long before the great
philosopher Malthus arose to think he enlightened the world by his
discovery.”[327] The supposed liberty of a democratic state proves in
practice to be no other than anarchy, running swiftly into license and
ending in tyranny. All human societies are rooted in exploitation, the
bitter fruit of which is domestic warfare.
The universal social state is one of ruthless class struggle, wherein
the strong conquer the weak--this is the third deduction from the
premises which Adams laid down. It cannot be otherwise, he argued, from
the natural inequality of men. The rude mass being shiftless, ignorant,
spendthrift, they are at the mercy of the strong, ambitious, and
capable, who exploit them freely. Hence in every society emerges the
division between patricians and plebeians, developing into caste as the
social order grows complex. The self-interest of the patricians teaches
them the need of class solidarity, and with intelligent solidarity the
few easily seize control of the state and use it to their ends. Hence
arises an aristocracy or oligarchy, which maintains its power through
control of the economic resources of society. Control of property means
control of men; for sovereignty inheres in economics. In presence of
this historical fact it is foolish to declaim about natural rights;
there are no rights except such as are won either by property or the
sword.
That there should long exist a society without a property aristocracy
Adams regarded as inconceivable. The French democrats with their
talk of equality and fraternity were mischievous visionaries. “Every
democracy ... has an aristocracy in it as distinct as that of Rome,
France, England.” In older societies the aristocracy maintained
supremacy through possession of the land. In America the vast extent
of territory and the wide diffusion of landholding presented the most
favorable opportunity in history for democratic development if such
were possible; nevertheless the evidences of an aristocracy developing
here were too patent to miss. The abundance of economic resources,
Adams pointed out, was an invitation to gigantic exploitation, the
logical outcome of which must be the emergence of a master group,
richer and more powerful than the world has ever known. The power of
economic appeal was nullified in America by no special providence.
Paper wealth has been a source of aristocracy in this country,
as well as landed wealth, with a vengeance. Witness the immense
fortunes made _per saltum_ by aristocratical speculations, both in
land and paper.... But, sir, land and paper are not the only source
of aristocracy. There are master shipwrights, housewrights, masons,
&c. &c., who have each of them from twenty to a hundred families
in their employment, and can carry a posse to the polls when they
will. These are not only aristocrats, but a species of feudal
barons....
Should a planter in Virginia sell his _clarissimum et
illustrissimum et celeberricum locum_ with his thousand negroes,
to a merchant, would not the merchant gain the aristocratical
influence which the planter lost by his transfer? Run down, sir,
through all the ranks of society ... from the first planter and the
first merchant to the hog driver, the whiskey dram-seller, or the
Scottish peddler, and consider, whether the alienation of lands,
wharves, stores, pike stock, or even lottery tickets, does not
transfer the aristocracy as well as the property.[328]
Believe--as John Adams believed regarding the funding operations--that
“paper wealth is the madness of the many for the profit of the
few,”[329] it is nevertheless a modern illustration of the old truth
that the few do profit from the madness of the many, and by reason of
such profit set themselves up as masters. If then the historian cannot
escape the conclusion that political systems and social classes rest
upon economic foundations, this fundamental fact must preside over
the speculations of the political philosopher. Democracy is out of
the question, even if it were desirable. The great and sole object
of political science must be the preservation of liberty--the right
of every individual to life, freedom, property, in an aristocratic
society--and the frustration of the universal drive of self-interest
which leads on the one hand to tyranny, and on the other to anarchy.
Between these two poles of tyranny and anarchy, of oligarchy and
democracy, every society oscillates; to prevent such oscillation and
discover some mean between the extremes must be the business of the
political philosopher. The pregnant fallacy of the French school,
Adams insisted, lay in its doctrines of equality and fraternity. The
meanest underling does not desire equality; men kiss the feet above
them and trample on the fingers beneath. That the people love a lord
is a sign of their abundant folly. Should the democrats abolish the
principle of hereditary rank by law, it would still remain in fact; for
the property basis on which it rests is transmitted legally from father
to son, and each successive generation gains an adventitious advantage
from its substantial heritage as well as from the historical splendor
of the family name. On this rock every attempt at a democracy has
foundered.
If these words are true, no well ordered commonwealth ever existed;
for we read of none without a nobility, no, not one, that I can
recollect, without a hereditary nobility; ... It would be an
improvement in the affairs of society, probably, if the hereditary
legal descent could be avoided; and this experiment the Americans
have tried. But in this case a nobility must and will exist,
though without the name, as really as in countries where it is
hereditary.[330]
The mortal weakness of democracy, Adams agreed with Madison and the
Federalists generally, lay in faction, a disease which in the nature of
the case he regarded as incurable. The use of party power other than
justly was factional, and because the mass of men do not set justice
above present interest, the unbridled rule of the majority drives
straight towards mass tyranny. Despoiled by the superior ability of the
aristocracy, the exploited plebeians fight back blindly; and where the
constitution of government permits them to band together in a political
party, they override the rights of the minority as ruthlessly as the
latter before had denied the rights of the majority. Aristocratic
exploitation leads to democratic leveling; and the resultant anarchy is