Though it’s not a very lengthy
document, John Adams’ Thoughts on
Government is relatively dense with information. And along with its various
recommendations for the proper structuring of a republican constitution (which
I’ll be discussing in my next post) it contains a handful of references, veiled
and explicit, to theories or documents that Adams was influenced by in his
deliberations on the topic of government. As with the Declaration of
Independence I do believe it’s important to explore these influences, and
discuss how they affect the way Adams’ writings and the things they put in
motion are viewed, and how they connect the events of the American Revolution
to the wider philosophical and political world of the 18th century.
Off the top, I’d say it’s worth
noting that Adams beings and ends Thoughts
on Government with quotations from English poets Alexander Pope and John
Milton. In addition to being a poet, Pope was also a satirist and a noted
friend and supporter of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, a politician and
political philosopher who was extremely influential among the learned class in
North America for his support of republicanism. And Milton, aside from penning
the much-celebrated Paradise Lost, had
supported the execution of Charles I in 1649 and subsequently served in the
government of the Commonwealth of England (a republic which lasted from 1649 to
1659). That he chose to quote these men, using their words to punctuate his
own, reveals Adams’ attachment to the republican philosophical movement that
existed within the broader 17th-and-18th-century
Enlightenment, and more specifically to a particular English strain of
political thought.
This is further evidenced by a
passage (by my reckoning in the tenth paragraph) in which Adams writes out the
names of eight English republican political philosophers, claiming that the
principles they represent would no doubt meet with scorn from “modern English
men,” but that their writings would convince any rational mind that the only
good government must be republican in form. In addition to the quoted Milton,
these men included Algernon Sidney (who was executed in 1683 for plotting
against Charles I), James Harrington (who wrote about the ideal republican
constitution), John Locke (who I discussed in my first set of posts), Marchmont
Nedham (propagandist for the Commonwealth of England), Henry Neville (another
satirist), Gilbert Burnet (Scottish theologian and contemporary of Locke), and
Benjamin Hoadly (clergyman and prominent defender of the Glorious Revolution). 17th-century republican
philosophers, writers, and supporters of the ill-fated Commonwealth, they would
not have been held in the highest esteem by the political class in Britain in
1776. For that reason Adams’ familiarity with them says something about his and
his contemporaries’ education and influences. After all, for him to be able to
say “the works of Harrington or Sidney are particularly instructive on this
subject,” he had to be assured that his readers would know who he was referring
to and what they had written. This evident familiarity with English republican
philosophy of Adams and his colleagues provides further insight into the
colonists’ self-identity as members of a distinctly English political
tradition.
Particularly un-English, however,
is Adams reference to the views expressed by Montesquieu (who I also mentioned
in a previous post) in his Spirit of the
Laws. Montesquieu, among other things, stated in his treatise that there
were three basic forms of government, the republic, the monarchy, and the
despotism. Each of these forms, he claimed, was grounded in a central
motivating principle: republics were motivated by virtue, or the willingness of
the people to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good; monarchies
were motivated by honor, or the love of rank and privilege; and despotisms were
motivated by fear, of the ruler or the ruling class, from which there was no
legal protection. In the sixth through ninth paragraphs of Thoughts on Government Adams makes essentially the same argument,
further claiming that Americans weren't fearful enough to fall prey to
despotism and didn't love honor as much as virtue, being the noblest principle
and the best foundation for “the most generous models of government.” Because
Adams’ later life would show that his sentiments lay most definitely with
Britain and its political traditions (though certainly not to the extent that
some of his detractors claimed), it’s interesting to see him reference a
prominent French philosopher so directly, and at such a relatively early stage
in his career. Coming from someone like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison an
affinity for Montesquieu would not have seemed remarkable, both being noted
devotees of French culture and philosophy. But from Adams, the staid, sober
Anglophile, it feels more than a little out of character. What this points to,
I think, is an awareness on the part of Adams and his confederates of their connection
to the larger intellectual world of the 18th-century. Though many viewed
their conflict with Parliament and the Crown through a distinctly English
political and historical lens, the educated class in the colonies were very
conscious of the broader philosophical discussions that had been going on in
Western Europe since the 17th century, and considered themselves a
vital part of the conversation.
Adams makes two further
references of note that connect with both his attachment to English history and
his knowledge of Western European politics and government. In the fourteenth
paragraph of Thoughts on Government,
during a discussion of the faults inherent in a unicameral legislature, Adams
refers to the English Long Parliament and the States General of the Dutch
Republic as examples of assemblies that grew ambitious and voted themselves
into permanent existence. Though he doesn't go into great detail as to how
these examples help him make his point, I do believe that they reveal some of
the elements of history and contemporary political science that Adams felt were
worth drawing upon when setting about crafting an ideal republican
constitution.
After an eleven-year period of
ruling without legislative approval, Charles I summoned the Long Parliament in
1640 in an effort to pass much-needed financial legislation. The assembled
members ultimately voted that Parliament should meet at least once every three
years whether the king called an election or not in an attempt to prevent
another period of personal rule by the monarch. Tensions between Charles and
the assembly mounted over the years that followed as Parliament tried to
standardise taxation and wrest control of the military away from the crown.
The dispute came to a head in 1642 when, after moving his court from London to
Oxford and effectively dividing the legislature between supporters of
Parliament and the Crown, armed hostilities broke out and the English Civil War effectively
began. The Long Parliament continued to sit throughout this period, was purged
of its “disloyal” members in 1648, forcibly disbanded in 1653, recalled in
1659, and finally permanently dissolved in 1660. Because of its well-documented
resistance to royal authority and the republican-leaning sentiments of many of
its members the Long Parliament came to be looked upon favorably in
post-Glorious Revolution Britain as a harbinger of parliamentary supremacy and
constitutional monarchism. As a citizen of the colonies, who had long nurtured
a rather tenuous relationship with the Crown, Adams was more than likely of
this opinion. Indeed, his claim in Thoughts
on Government was that the Long Parliament’s “one fault” was its perpetual
nature. This reference, among other things, reveals both Adams’ dedication to the
principle of government accountability, and his tendency to view the dispute
between the colonies and the Crown and the prospect of ideal government in a
distinctly English context.
Though in 1776 it was really the only republic
in existence, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (or Dutch Republic)
was not particularly representative of the people it governed or responsive to
their needs and concerns. Having emerged out of a rebellion against Spanish
rule in 1581, the Republic was governed by the States General, more a
semi-feudal assembly than a modern legislature. In essence, each of the
provinces had an assembly of its own consisting of representatives from each of
the recognized towns and the local nobility. These assemblies each nominated
delegates to the States General, who voted as provinces rather than as
individuals. The States General was responsible for the military, foreign
relations, and tariffs, and left most domestic issues to the individual
provinces. The de-facto head of state, the Stadtholder, was initially appointed
to his position by the respective provincial assemblies, though the office became
hereditary by the mid-18th century. Similarly, the various
provincial assemblies became less and less receptive to public opinion over
time as executive authority in most towns became centralized in the hands of
the wealthy business class. By the 1770s, in spite of its foundation amidst a
popular revolt, the Republic had become highly aristocratic in nature and was
dominated by large landowners, bankers, merchants, and the ruling princes. It
is thus unsurprising that Adams looked to the Republic as a prime example of
how governments intended to fairly and rationally administer a complicated set
of interests could become unresponsive to the people. But more to the point, I
think, Adams’ invocation of the Dutch model demonstrates his ability to occasionally
see beyond just his favored English examples, and look to the broader Western
world for inspirations and cautions in his quest to design a more perfect form
of republican government.
Taken together, the references in
Thoughts on Government to political
philosophers and poets, English history and Dutch politics provide evidence of
both the intellectual character of John Adams (as a man of meticulous habits
and particularly English sympathies) and the way he approached the notion of
the ideal republic. While he clearly viewed (along with some of his
contemporaries) certain strains of English political thought and English
history as a source of knowledge and inspiration, his willingness to invoke the
writings of Montesquieu and the contemporary Dutch Republic demonstrates his sense
of the American Revolution and the philosophical questions it raised as part of
a broader discussion on the nature of government that was connected to the
history and politics of the enlightened, 18th-century world.
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