Cato V, Part III: Safe Democratical Principles

The actual text of the essay published in the New-York Journal on November 22^nd, 1787, now known by the title of Cato V, encompassed but a scant seven paragraphs, totaling scarcely more than seventeen hundred words from start to finish. It was addressed, “To the Citizens of the State of New York,” much as the rival Federalist Papers had been and would be, and was signed, simply, “Cato.” Its subject, as stated by the author – whom we have acknowledged was likely to have been Governor George Clinton of New York – was meant to be a continuation of certain of the thoughts expressed in the preceding entry and which seemed to change after no more than a paragraph or two upon any particular train of ideas. At first the pseudonymous scribe expressed alarm at the “inexplicitness” of the proposed constitution, then shifted to a discussion of the manners of the American people, and then began to ruminate on the inadequacy of biennial elections and the importance of adequately representing diverse and numerous populations. And then he was finished. Seventeen hundred words, in and out, please and thank you. Such a brief thing, so succinct in tone and humble in presentation, might fairly be thought to contain scarce little of consequence to the debate of which it was a part. Other Anti-Federalists wrote longer pieces, made more and varied references to great philosophers and statesmen. But for all of Cato V’s brevity, or its author’s seeming tendency to touch upon a bevy of topics in quick succession, there was – and is – much to consider contained therein. The eponymous Cato may not have had a great deal to say at a stretch, but he had an evident knack for saying it well and incisively.

Consider, to that end, Clinton’s assertion in the fourth paragraph of Cato V that the terms of election for the House of Representatives described in the proposed constitution represented a dangerous departure, “From the safe democratical principles [.]” The text in question, located in Article I, Section 2, stated specifically that, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States [.]” While this made Representatives the elected officer of the proposed national government with the shortest term in office – Senators were to be elected every six years, the President every four – Clinton was nevertheless adamant that annual elections would have been preferable. He was far from alone in either adhering to or expressing this sentiment, of course. A number of his fellow Anti-Federalists had made or would make similar declarations. A letter published under the pseudonym “Agippa” in the Massachusetts Gazette on February 5^th, 1788, for example, asserted that, “The constitution lately proposed for the United States be received only upon the following conditions, [that] the president shall be chosen annually and shall serve but one year, and shall be chosen successively from the different states, changing every year…” This preference was echoed – albeit not as forcefully – in an essay published two months later on April 9^th, 1788 in the Hampshire Gazette and signed by Consider Arms, Malichi Maynard, and Samuel Field. “Although we think it More agreeable to the principles of republicanism, that elections should be annual,” it read, “Yet as the elections in our own state government are so, we did not view it so dangerous to the liberties of the people, that we should have rejected the constitution merely on account of the biennial elections of the representatives [.]”

While Agrippa did not attempt to explain why it was that yearly elections appeared to them to be necessary – nor did Arms, Maynard, and Field identify why they thought they were preferable – at least one of their colleagues went so far as to provide a basic justification in a speech he delivered during the Virginia Ratifying Convention. William Grayson (1740-1790) speaking on June 18^th, 1788, said of the four year term granted to the President that, “This quadrennial power cannot be justified by ancient history. There is hardly an instance where a republic trusted its executive so long with much power; nor is it warranted by modern republics. The delegation of power is, in most of them, only for one year.” There was something to this, to be sure. Under the unwritten constitution of the Roman Republic – to which many an 18^th century devotee of republicanism looked for inspiration – Tribunes, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, Consuls, and Censors were all subject to one year terms in office. Combined with strict age requirements and time-sensitive restrictions on reelection to the same office, the intention of such institutional limitations was essentially to diffuse authority as widely as possible within the relevant socio-economic communities so as to prevent entrenchment, corruption, and the subversion of the republican form of government.

None of this succeeded in averting the eventual collapse of the Roman Republic amidst a rising tide of venality and radical populism, of course. But that didn’t stop European Enlightenment-era scholars and political theorists from attaching a great deal of importance to figures like Cato the Younger (95-46 BC) and Cicero (106-43 BC) – opponents both of political corruption and the rise of populist strongmen like Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) – and to concepts like term limits in service of their efforts to promote the reform of existing models of government and the creation of entirely new ones. Grayson’s offhand declaration that, “There is hardly an instance where a republic trusted its executive so long with much power [,]” would seem to speak to the degree to which this had become an almost entirely unspoken assumption among a certain cohort of the late 18^th century Anglo-American scholarly elite. Having, as a class, internalized the notion that term limits were good – and that annual term limits were best of all – Gayson didn’t even have to mention Rome in particular or the history of republican antiquity in general for his point to have been sufficiently communicated. Agippa, and Arms, Maynard and Field arguably accomplished much the same with even less specific language.   
    

            For his part, however, Clinton as Cato seemed not to find comfort in such shorthand. Rather than refer to the customary Roman example as justification enough for his assertion that annual elections were preferable to the biennial vote for Representatives described by the proposed constitution, he explained in relative depth how it was that a yearly term served to benefit a given society, making reference all the while to political theory of a far more recent vintage than that of the Roman Republic. Specifically, in paragraphs five and six of Cato V, Clinton cited both the French philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) and the English statesman and political theorist Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) in support of his belief that yearly elections form an essential part of the intrinsic advantage enjoyed by democratic government. “A well digested democracy,” he thus explained,

Affords to many the opportunity to be advanced to the supreme command, and the honors they thereby enjoy fill them with a desire of rendering themselves worthy of them; hence this desire becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country, and it is the opinion of the great Sidney, and Montesquieu that this is in a great measure produced by annual election of magistrates.

It was Clinton’s conviction, it seemed, that annual elections were desirable not simply because they formed a part of the legacy of antiquity which 18^th century devotees of republicanism had collectively decided to seize upon. Rather, as he declared in the cited text of Cato V, he believed that the yearly selection of magistrates served to nourish a spirit of public service and contributed to the necessary education of those who would seek to fulfill the role of statesman.

Montesquieu did say something to that effect himself, lest it be thought that Clinton tossed off his name solely to appear as though he was as conversant as his Federalist opponents in the finer points of contemporary French political philosophy. Like James Madison in Federalist No. 47, Clinton was referring to Montesquieu’s 1748 treatise entitled The Spirit of the Laws, the significance of which was deeply felt by some of the most prominent theorists among the Founding Generation. In Clinton’s case, though he did not cite them directly, he appeared to be referring to Book III, Chapter III, or Book IV, Chapter V, or quite possibly to both. In the text of the former, entitled “Of the Principle of Democracy,” Montesquieu affirmed that, whereas the principles upon which monarchy and despotism functioned – being two of the three types of government he identified – were honor and fear, respectively, that which democracy similarly embodied was the principle of virtue. The reason for this was simple enough, and eminently practical. “In a monarchy,” he explained,

Where he who commands the execution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person intrusted with the execution of the laws, is sensible of his being subject himself to their direction.

While he did not say so explicitly, the implication of Montesquieu’s claim that people who make laws in a democracy are sensitive of being subject to them would seem to be that democratic lawmakers are drawn from among the population at large. Their power, therefore, is temporary; from among the citizenry they are drawn to do their service and back into the citizenry they must eventually dissolve. It thus behooves them to behave in a virtuous manner, lest they suffer the consequences in the long-term of whatever gains they believed they could make in the short-term.

Granting that this evaluation of the necessity of virtue in democratic governments might appear somewhat simplistic, Montesquieu did explain further on in The Spirit of the Laws that such a trait did not come naturally to mankind, that it’s absence would most definitely present an obstacle to the creation of stable democratic government, and that some form of moral education was likely needed to inculcate the habits of virtue in future generations. “It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required,” he explained accordingly in Book IV, Chapter V (“Of Education in a Republican Government”);

The fear of despotic governments rises naturally of itself amidst threats and punishments; the honor of monarchies is favoured by the passions, and favours them in its turn: but virtue is a self-renunciation which is always arduous and painful. This virtue may be defined, the love of the laws and of our country. As this love requires a constant preference of public to private interest, it is the source of all the particular virtues; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself. This love is peculiar to democracies. In these alone the government is intruded to private citizens. Now government is like every thing else: to preserve it, we must love it.

Though Montesquieu went on to explain in the text of The Spirit of the Laws that the requisite education could take a number of different forms – referring along the way to examples ranging from ancient Sparta to contemporary Paraguay – he did not include annual elections as among the methods he believed were most likely to encourage a democratic people towards an instinct for virtue. While one may accordingly be given to wonder just what it was the author of Cato V was referring to when he declared that “the great Montesquieu” agreed that “an ardent affection for their country” could be produced in a people via the mechanism of “annual election of magistrates,” the answer might conceivably be traced to the subtext of what Montesquieu was attempting to explain rather than to the text itself.  

            Recall, as cited above, that Montesquieu believed virtue to be the essential element of democratic government, and that he furthermore conceived of virtue as to some extent springing naturally from the relationship which was bound to exist in a democratic state between the lawmakers and the law. Legislators being drawn from the people at large, they could none of them seek to enact of piece of legislation for their own short-term gain which they would not eventually be forced to obey. Despite having been raised to a position of power, and being free to use that power as they saw fit, they must eventually return to the bosom of the people over which they but recently bore sway. The implication of this arrangement, though Montesquieu did not say so specifically, would nonetheless appear to be that the shorter the period a given citizen exercises legislative authority, the more likely they are to behave in a virtuous manner. Being six years in power, say, a person might think it possible to accrue such protections as to effectively avoid the consequences of whatever self-serving acts they committed while in office. Being one year in office, however, that same person might believe it comparatively impossible to erect such barriers or collect such resources as would shield them from the authority which they had themselves but recently served to augment. And as this principle would appear likely to promote virtuous action on the part of those who might otherwise behave selfishly, in time it might also reasonably begin to condition people that behaving selflessly when granted access to a significant public trust was entirely natural and expected.

True, as Montesquieu explicitly affirmed, education as to the necessity of virtue would almost certainly need to begin much sooner than the point at which an individual is likely to find themselves elevated to an office in government – “The surest way of instilling it into children, is for parents to set them an example [,]” he explained. And it also bears noting that the author of The Spirit of the Laws made no mention in the relevant sections of the role which annual elections might play in producing the “ardent affection for their county” which Clinton as Cato avowed that he had. This is likely why Clinton chose not to quote from Montesquieu directly – there simply wasn’t anything in the explicit text which would have aided him in making the case that he wanted to make. That being said, it wasn’t as though Montesquieu’s stated reasoning was completely at odds with the claim that Clinton made in the cited section of Cato V. Montesquieu did say, if not directly, that public service in a democracy made people more conscious of the kinds of laws they were passing and of the manner in which they exercised power. And he also said that virtue was something that needed to be taught because it wasn’t a trait that came naturally to human beings. It would thus seem like a fairly natural extension of these ideas for Clinton to then affirm that creating more opportunities for citizens in a republic to engage in public service would aid in their necessary education by making as many of them aware as possible that virtue was the only sensible course of behavior. Montesquieu, it bears repeating, did not say exactly that at any point within the text of The Spirit of the Laws. But he said enough that could have conceivably inspired such a claim that Clinton’s invocation of his name in Cato V cannot be considered wholly without basis. It was a stretch, to be sure, but not an unjustifiable one.

As to why Clinton felt the need to cite Montesquieu at all, there is very likely more than one potential answer. As noted above, Charlies-Louis de Secondat declared in The Spirit of the Laws that the essential principle upon which republican government was based was that of virtue. Monarchies, he said, were based on the notion of honor – that is to say, rewards for service – and despotisms were based on fear – that is to say, fear of power – but republics required their citizens to maintain an ardent belief in the principle that service to the greater good at the expense of the individual was its own reward. It was not an easy course, he admitted – “Virtue is a self-renunciation which is always arduous and painful” – but it was a necessary one for republican government to function. By explicitly expressing his agreement with Montesquieu – though perhaps not with any specific quotation – Clinton may have hoped to project the image of alignment between the case he was attempting to make and this general philosophical principle. In essence, if Montesquieu believed in the importance of virtue, and Clinton agreed with Montesquieu, then Clinton must also have believed the same. It helped, of course, that Montesquieu also avowed that the republican form of government could only function as intended on a small scale, and that the larger a state became the more difficult it would be for a republic to stay republican. Clinton as Cato had every reason to project his agreement with this principle as well, being the governor of a relatively small state whose authority was tacitly being threatened by plans to more thoroughly incorporate it into a large one. James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 10, had actively defied Montesquieu – whose ideas he otherwise favorably invoked – by affirming that an “extensive republic” was in actual fact possible so long as its government was properly organized. By rhetorically placing himself next to Montesquieu, Clinton may therefore also have intended to take one of his opponents to task. Whereas Madison claimed to revere Montesquieu while disregarding one of the fundamental principles he espoused, Clinton remained comparatively true to his ideas, conceivably strengthening his case as a result.

Clinton’s invocation in Cato V of the writings of 17^th century English political theorist Algernon Sidney appeared somewhat less nakedly rhetorical than that which he directed at the aforementioned Baron de Montesquieu. Whereas the French philosophe was named without being quoted, Sidney’s words found their way into the final text of Clinton’s essay in direct support of his avowed belief in the efficacy of annual elections. “If annual elections were to exist in this government,” the sixth paragraph of Cato V accordingly began, “And learning and information to become more prevalent, you never will want man to execute whatever you could design [.]” In support of this assertion, Clinton cited two passages from Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1698), a treatise which was used in evidence against the latter during the treason trial in 1683 that ultimately resulted in his execution. The first, taken from the section entitled, “That is the Best Government, Which Best Provides for War,” declared, “That a well governed state is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven headed serpent is said to have been in evil; when one head is cut off, many rise up in the place of it.” By and large, this would seem to align with what Clinton had affirmed in the previous paragraph of Cato V. Much as with Montesquieu’s stated belief in the paramount importance of education to the cultivation and maintenance of republican virtue, Sidney avowed that republics were particularly stable because authority therein rested on many shoulders rather than on those of some narrow elite. The reason that this was possible, Clinton helpfully asserted, was that access to the levers of power within a republic was more widely available than in any other form of government, thus diffusing both responsibility and knowledge across a comparatively wide percentage of the general population. A state thus organized could accordingly avoid vesting power in an insular cabal or a ruling dynasty whose members were bound to place their interests ahead of the public good. If one magistrate in a republic proved ill-tempered or ill-suited, there were a great many more who could take their place. Annual elections would naturally facilitate this outcome better than biennial elections by providing more opportunities for the public to replace such officers as had acted against their wishes and by more widely disseminating administrative experience as a greater number of individuals rotated through office.

    

The second passage which Clinton cited, taken from the section of Discourses Concerning Government entitled, “Men Living Under Popular or Mix’d Governments, Are More Careful of the Public Good, Than in Absolute Monarchies,” seemed to expand on this same idea by stating that, “Free cities by frequent elections of magistrates became nurseries of great and able men, every man endeavoring to excel others, that he might be advanced to the honor he had no other title to, than what might arise from his merit, or reputation.” Sidney – and Clinton by association – thus brought to bear upon the balance of interests within a republic the additional concept of incentive. Republics, he avowed, essentially harnessed individual ambition for the purpose of furthering the public good by offering people who sought honor and prestige the opportunity to attain them both in service of their fellow man. Though this is arguably something of a paradox – people seeking to fulfill their selfish ambitions by acting selflessly – it is nevertheless also a fairly sensible proposition. In a republic, as Sidney indicated, anyone – within certain reasonable limits – could gain the power to legislate or to carry out the execution of the laws provided they could secure the trust and approbation of their fellow citizens. Those best suited to exercise such responsibilities, as it happened, were arguably among the least likely to seek them. Possessed of virtue and inclined towards self-sacrifice, such individuals would naturally be disinclined to pursue power for its own sake. Meanwhile, those least suited – because of their ambition, their selfishness, or their delusions of superiority – would be the most likely to aspire to the highest possible public authority. A republican society might try all it liked to cultivate virtue in the individual – as Montesquieu believed was eminently necessary – but there were still bound to be people for whom self-aggrandizement came more naturally than self-abnegation.

Fortunately – or so Sidney affirmed – republicanism embodied its own solution to this very problem. If the only way to attain the highest offices in a republic was to win the public’s trust, and if there were always going to be people in a republic who sought after the highest offices, then the obvious result was bound to be the gradual internalization by these ambitious office-seekers of the habits and attitudes of honesty and self-sacrifice. Some of them might attempt to wear honesty as a mask, of course, while simultaneously conspiring to greater heights of power and prestige. But between the constant scrutiny of their constituents and the constant threat of losing reelection, such a performance would have to become nearly unceasing. A particularly determined individual might attempt shoulder this burden all the same, playing at selflessness in their every public action and remark while pursuing their own ambitions in the privacy of their own council. But why bother? Why go to the trouble of keeping up such an elaborate ruse when sincerely embracing the path or virtue would likely bring about the same result? If pretending to be honest would net the same outcome as actually being honest, why bother pretending? This, Sidney affirmed, was the essential bargain which the republican form of government offered to its inhabitants. Prestige could be theirs, and honor, and the adulation of their fellow citizens. All they had to do was to behave in such a way as to deserve these things. All they had to do was be virtuous. Some, again, would resist the logic of this trade, self-abnegation being – as Montesquieu put it – an arduous and painful course of behavior. But in time, in Clinton’s own words, the desire on the part of certain individuals, “To be advanced to the supreme command […] becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country [.]” Ambition, in short, would be made to negate itself.

Annual elections, of course, would play a central role in this process by offering more frequent opportunities for the elevation of individuals to offices of public trust and by serving as a constant check on said individual’s behavior. In essence, the more elections that were held, the more people would believe they had a chance of attaining high office, and the more they would cultivate the attitudes and behaviors which they believed would get them there. To be sure, this could hardly be said to represent an infallible principle of republican political philosophy. As the intervening centuries have shown, virtue is not necessarily the primary characteristic which an individual aspiring to office in a republic must demonstrate in order to reliably secure election. Indeed, the rise of formal partisanship and the influence of radical populism have arguably succeeded in ensuring that strict adherence to a narrow policy platform or the use of manipulative rhetoric can both be counted on to produce support among a given group of constituents far more effectively than a display of honesty or integrity. That being said, Clinton’s invocation of Sidney in the text of Cato V nonetheless represents a very early attempt to apply in practice what up to that point in Anglo-American history had remained an untested theory.

Algernon Sidney, recall, was always more of a philosopher than a statesman whose writings on the nature and necessity of republicanism never came particularly close to being implemented within his lifetime. Indeed, it was his dedication to seeing them implemented – and his consequent opposition to monarchy and connection with one anti-monarchist association in particular – that arguably resulted in his trial, conviction, and execution for treason. Yet here was George Clinton, writing over a century later under the name of Cato, attempting to utilize some of the principles laid down by Sidney to secure the alteration of a proposed republican government that was just on the cusp of being sanctioned and enacted. Naturally, he had no more idea in the 1780s whether said principles would play out as intended than Sidney had had one hundred years prior and an ocean away. But compared to a number of his fellow Anti-Federalists, Clinton could at least offer a rationale for demanding annual elections that went deeper than, “Because the Romans did it.” As he claimed to understand it – and has Sidney had figured previously – republics were possessed of the unusual ability of being able to produce one of the key elements they required to survive. Virtue, as previously defined by the Montesquieu, was that essential element, and elections were the means by which a republic could seek to promote it. The more often they were held, the more people would seek to use them to gain access to the levers of power. And as the price for elevation to the seat of this power was an outward and continual adherence to the ideals of honesty and self-sacrifice, ambition would actively be converted into virtue. Annual elections would arguably draw this process out to its logical conclusion by focusing constant attention on officeholders and their behavior and by in time serving to embed the habits of virtue in the core of the relevant society’s political culture. As mentioned above, this can hardly be said to represent a flawless conception of the fundamental power dynamics that exist within a republic. Nevertheless, George Clinton would seem to deserve no small amount of credit for at least understanding at such an early and uncertain point in the history of modern republicanism that certain questions yet remained as to the sustainability of that form of government, and for attempting to offer some manner of response. 

Cato V, Part II: Context, contd.

Though throughout the 1770s and 1780s George Clinton had shown himself to be a sincere and ardent supporter of the Patriot cause and of the authority of Congress – his working relationship with Continental Army Commander-in-Chief George Washington was notably warm and supportive, for example, and his was the first state government to support the (ultimately failed) five percent tax on foreign imports proposed by Congress in 1781 – this changed to a very large extent once the Revolutionary War came to an end.  Not only did New York under his leadership reject the requisitions – i.e. voluntary taxes –  which Congress requested of it, dispute border claims made by other states which would have infringed upon its territory, and categorically reject the efforts of local authorities in Vermont to gain admission to the American union as the fourteenth state – in spite of the assistance provided by militiamen from Vermont in defending New York during the late war with Britain – but Clinton also entirely refused to comply with one of the provisions of the war-ending Treaty of Paris (1783). Article V of said document, negotiated in part by his fellow New Yorker John Jay, stated that,

Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the legislatures of the respective states to provide for the restitution of all estates, rights, and properties, which have been confiscated belonging to real British subjects […] that Congress shall also earnestly recommend to the several states a reconsideration and revision of all acts or laws regarding the premises, so as to render the said laws or acts perfectly consistent not only with justice and equity but with that spirit of conciliation which on the return of the blessings of peace should universally prevail. And that Congress shall also earnestly recommend to the several states that the estates, rights, and properties, of such last mentioned persons shall be restored to them, they refunding to any persons who may be now in possession the bona fide price (where any has been given) which such persons may have paid on purchasing any of the said lands, rights, or properties since the confiscation.

Granting that Clinton was under no obligation to acquiesce to the “earnest recommendations” which Congress was obliged to make, his refusal to do so was nonetheless cause for concern among certain of his former allies. While the likes of Washington, his former aid-de-camp and confidant Alexander Hamilton, and the aforementioned John Jay were all of the opinion that establishing warm relations with Great Britain was in the best interests of the United States as a whole – economically, politically, and militarily – Clinton seemed to be concerned with nothing more than maintaining the electoral base he had built for himself at the expense of those who, though they had supported the Crown during the late war, were ultimately as American as he was.

            Clinton’s evident selfishness was arguably made yet clearer to his opponents when, in 1784, he oversaw the passage of a series of import duties through the New York General Assembly at around the same time he encouraged the successful rejection of imposts proposed by Congress in 1785, 1786, and 1787. This was hardly an inexplicable turnaround, of course. Following the British evacuation of New York City in November 1783, trade once more flowed through the city’s port facilities and import duties thereafter accounted for between one-third and one-half of the state’s annual revenue. Combined with the aforementioned profits derived from the sale of confiscated Loyalist property, this funding source helped keep property taxes in the Empire States relatively low, preventing the emergence of the kind of rural discontent which plagued many of states in the post-war era, and fostering the sort of economic prosperity of which few other states could boast. Granting the authority to Congress to lay duties on imports would doubtless have upset this state of affairs to some degree, though the exact nature of the potential effects remains an open question. Nevertheless, the very prospect was enough for Clinton to steadfastly and consistently oppose any measures which might possibly have threatened his state’s power to chart a course of economic self-sufficiency. It is therefore more than a little ironic that this adamant opposition to strengthening the authority of Congress on the part of New York’s longstanding Governor arguably proved instrumental in setting in motion the chain of events which would result in exactly that.

            Alexander Hamilton, who had previously become an admirer of Governor George Clinton during the former’s service as aid-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, was given sufficient cause over the course of the 1780s to drastically reevaluate his opinion of his home state’s longstanding chief executive. Certainly there was the fact of his marriage to Eliza Schuyler (1757-1854), daughter of the aforementioned Philip Schuyler. Landholding families like the Schuylers and the Livingstons had shielded their personal holdings from confiscation when they chose to support Congress and the cause of American independence, but they nevertheless looked with anxiety and disfavor upon such laws as made possible the seizure of Loyalists estates and the public sale of Loyalist property. Such aggressive policies, they held, threatened the very concept of private property at the same time that they betrayed a “leveling spirit” that was especially dangerous when coupled to significant executive authority. Governor Clinton, for his part, seemed to symbolize this coupling of radical intention and practical power, particularly in the way that his efforts to ostensibly punish loyalty to the Crown had resulted in a significant redistribution of wealth and the bolstering of a previously sidelined socio-political community. Eager to prevent a further realignment of New York’s political status quo, and otherwise convinced that the surest way to promote social stability was to pursue reconciliation between the government of New York and such of its inhabitants as had supported the Crown during the war and declined to emigrate at its conclusion in 1783, the aforementioned landholding elite thus increasingly sought to limit the power and autonomy of Governor Clinton by way of external pressure.

The aforementioned Hamilton, who had also become an ardent nationalist during his service under Washington and came to believe very strongly that the prosperity of any one state was inextricably tied to the prosperity of the United States as a whole, presented the Schuyler/Livingston faction with arguably the best means of accomplishing this very objective. Having argued in favor of Loyalist property claims as a trial lawyer in New York City during the immediate post-war years in the early 1780s, the son-in-law of Philip Schuyler was likewise of the opinion that the civil rights of an entire social class had effectively been violated by Clinton’s heavy-handed application of the Confiscation Act. The solution which he alighted upon was to strengthen the authority of Congress to the point that it might effectively serve to restrain states like New York from infringing on the property rights of those of its citizens found to be in the minority on a given popular issue. The confiscation of Loyalist property was one such instance of radical populist policy relatively common in the states during the Revolutionary Era. Debt forgiveness was another, as was the mass printing of paper currency whose value depreciated rapidly upon issue. While the lower and middling classes who supported such measures believed they were essential to helping them avoid insolvency, pay off their outstanding obligations, and attain some degree of economic self-sufficiency, the likes of Hamilton and his elite supporters regarded them as harbingers of eventual economic and social chaos. Debts were contracts, after all, and property was sacred, and paper money was notorious for very quickly becoming valueless. If state government were allowed to proceed as they had been, of course, none of this would matter. Contracts would become meaningless, private property would become vulnerable to limitless seizure, and men of wealth would be forced to part with their services in exchange for nothing at all in the way of recompense. What else could one whose personal worth was bound up in land and loans call such a state of affairs but complete and total anarchy?

Congress seemed to Hamilton and his supporters as the best possible counter to such populist excesses among the states, though its relative weakness would need to be shored up. An early attempt at this – Hamilton’s aforementioned endeavor to use the threat of the Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783 to essentially extort his fellow delegates into approving new tax powers – had admittedly  met with failure, but others would nevertheless follow. The idea, essentially, was to incrementally increase the authority of Congress by allocating to it steadily greater and more wide-ranging responsibilities. Giving the primary organ of the contemporary United States government the ability to raise its own revenue would not alone have been sufficient to allow it to restrain or otherwise countermand the actions of the individual states, of course. But it would have granted Congress an increased degree of autonomy, permitted it to fund its own initiatives, and gone some distance towards promoting the idea that the national government of the American union was as deserving of respect and obedience as that of any state government. In short, it would have been an incremental step towards what Hamilton and his cohorts believed was ultimately necessary. Unfortunately - in the immediate, at least – this first step proved impossible to achieve. As mentioned above, efforts on the part of its supporters to see a national impost approved by Congress were defeated in 1785, 1786, and 1787 at the same time that New York under Governor Clinton was soaking up the revenue provided by its own local import duties. Were this not galling enough, the fact that the costs of such excises were often passed on to consumers in neighboring states like Connecticut and New Jersey simultaneously served to create the yet more intolerable situation by which taxes levied in one state were being paid by the citizens of another. In light of the seeming impossibility of seeking solutions from within the existing institutional status quo, therefore, Hamilton and other like-minded reformers determined at some point between September, 1786 – during which the failed Annapolis Convention met – and May, 1787 – when the Philadelphia Convention first convened – to completely restructure the institutions in question. At this point, of course, the Framers went about their framing, the proposed constitution was submitted to Congress, Congress submitted it to the states, and the ratification debate began.

As to Clinton himself, having here established his biography and the nature of his relationship to the whole concept of reforming the government of the United States of America, a few last points ought to be reiterated specifically. For one thing, though Clinton was not a well-educated man in a formal sense – certainly compared to the likes of Hamilton or Madison – he was neither ignorant of the philosophy which underpinned much of the ratification debate nor incapable of expressing himself in a clear and eloquent fashion. His father, the aforementioned Charles Clinton, was said to have possessed an extensive personal library to which his children had full access, and it is known by way of contemporary personal accounts that George was himself a voracious reader. The fact of his having attained the New York provincial bar in the early 1760s when he was scarcely more than twenty years old would seem to attest to the efficacy of this largely self-guided course of study.  The text of Cato V itself would seem to do likewise. While a fuller discussion of the same will follow in the next entry in the present series, it will here suffice to say that Clinton’s familiarity – nay, comfort – with the theories of political economy espoused by the likes of Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) was by no means inferior to that demonstrated by his nominal Federalist opponents. On the contrary, though he lacked the academic credentials of which they could boast – Hamilton and John Jay had attended King’s College (now Columbia University) while Madison was a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) – his written contributions to the ratification debate were as rigorously-reasoned and as well-sourced as their own.

For another thing, though Clinton was most definitely a New Yorker to the bones, he wasn’t particularly close to or enamored with that state’s thriving commercial sector. This, in truth, may have been one of the few things he had in common with his patrician rivals. Families like the Schuylers, the Livingstons, and the Van Rensselaers were primarily landlords by trade whose wealth was sustained by the rent payments of their potentially thousands of agriculturalist tenants. Commerce, of course, was what allowed these tenants to turn enough of a profit to pay their yearly rents while buying seed enough for the following season, but the manor lords tended not to trouble themselves with such details. From their perspective – naturally one of great wealth and privilege – merchants were a necessary evil whose habitual acquisitiveness rendered them unfit for polite society. They might have been able to provide some of the things which made it possible to live a gentlemanly lifestyle – fine textiles, silver tableware, Ceylon tea, Madeira wine, etc. – but they were themselves slightly scummy in their wheeling and dealing over bushels of wheat and hogsheads of tobacco. Though he was nearer, socio-economically, to a merchant than a manor lord, Clinton seemed to agree with this assessment, or at least to view the social consequences of New York’s domestic commerce with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Perhaps this was because, though not a patrician, he had nonetheless also managed to attain a prominent position for himself in the political power structure of the Empire State without having to indulge in any commercial ventures of his own. Having come up through the military, public service, and the law, Clinton was accordingly able to regard with suitable distance both the mercantile and aristocratic aspects of contemporary New York society and offer criticism of each in turn.

Finally, though Clinton was the product of a historical and cultural context in which public service tended to be viewed as either a badge of social rank or a class obligation – in a “To the manor born” sort of way – his personal approach to public office seems to have hewed much closer to that which was practiced in the United States of America by so-called “party bosses” between the middle of the 19^th century and the end of the 20^th century. These figures tended to be ostensibly low-level functionaries – i.e. county commissioners, treasurers, local committee chairs, or mayors – whose control over party nominations, patronage, and campaign strategy gave them a tremendous degree of power and influence over regional – or at times even national – politics. Bosses like New York’s William Tweed (1823-1878) and Richard Croker (1843-1922), Delaware County, Pennsylvania’s John J. McClure (1886-1965), and Chicago’s Richard Daley (1902-1976) presided over their respective organizations or “machines” for decades at a time, collecting and dispensing favors and currying influence with national political figures in accordance with what they felt were their party’s best interests. Granted, George Clinton was not a member of any formal political organization – as of the 1770s and 1780s at least – and his actions tended to work solely to his own benefit rather than that of some national figure whose indulgence he was attempting to solicit. Nonetheless, and in a very enterprising and populist sort of way, he used his authority as Governor of New York to make alliances, distribute patronage, and create and sustained new electoral blocs all while cultivating a popular following by appearing to be attentive and approachable where his opponents were arrogant and remote. This decidedly hands-on approach to politics was very much at odds with the arm’s-length and rather entitled style practiced by New York’s customary patrician elite. Whereas the Schuylers and Livingstons expected public office to effectively seek them out in recognition of their unequalled social status – and accordingly viewed campaigning as crass and undignified – Clinton built a highly successful political career on the principle of both engaging the public in the political process and becoming deeply engaged in the process himself. Such was his approach as chief executive of the state of New York, and such was also arguably his attitude as the author of Cato V.

Cato V, Part I: Context

Continuing with the theme of “opposition” which I seem to have inadvertently established over the course of the past few months – between examinations of the thoughts and convictions of Samuel Bryan (1759-1821) and Patrick Henry (1736-1799) – I’d like to take the opportunity just now to explore the insights of yet another member of the Founding Generation whose contributions to the history and development of the United States of America tend to get overshadowed amidst discussions of the small handful of individuals who seem habitually to inhabit the forefront of our imaginations. The likes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Hamilton will likely never cease to be objects of fascination and reverence for a certain portion of the human race, of course, and this is not without reason. These were (most of the time) terribly intelligent, insightful, and prudent men whose thoughts, actions, and expressions helped to define the structure and character of perhaps the single most influential nation of the last hundred years of human history. That being said – and as I hope I’ve succeeded in pointing out in the past – they did not accomplish the great feats for which they continue to be memorialized without a great deal of assistance. Washington did not wield the various powers of the executive branch in isolation for eight years, Jefferson did not draft the Declaration of Independence singlehandedly, and Madison was but one of many whose efforts produced the United States Constitution. The American Revolution was not the product of one man’s efforts, or even those of the whole of the Continental Congress. Rather, it took an entire nation of people – men and women, soldiers and statesmen, merchants and diplomats, farmers and sailors – to make America happen, and many more since then to keep it a going concern.

Not everyone who fits the definition of Founder, however, would have considered themselves members of that same cohort. That is to say, not everyone who made a valuable and lasting contribution to the advancement of American liberty and the wellbeing of the American people did so by cooperating with those we have come to consider the great heroes of the Revolution. Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), for example, or the aforementioned Samuel Bryan, or the pseudonymous authors of such anti-constitutional tracts as the Brutus (Robert Yates) and Plebian (Melanchthon Smith) letters lent their countrymen an invaluable service by seeking to frustrate rather than aid the ultimately successful efforts of better-known figures like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Though the likes of Warren, Bryan, Yates, and Smith ultimately failed in their attempts to defeat the ratification of the proposed constitution – thus seemingly consigning them to the role of historical “losers” – the insights which they shared with their countrymen as to the dangers posed by the creation of a centralized national government proved essential to the eventual success of the American experiment. Not only did their well-intentioned and well-argued objections to certain aspects of the proposed constitution serve as a direct catalyst for the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights – an addition to the governing charter of the United States of America whose value is likely inestimable – but they also helped to reaffirm for a people yet still flush with the ego-swelling glow of military victory that the battle for American liberty continued far beyond the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783. The price for winning the freedom of the American people may have been a given sum of blood, sweat, and treasure, but the cost of maintaining it – as the Anti-Federalists named above sought to affirm – was nothing less than constant vigilance. Bearing all of this in mind, it might fairly be said – in most any situation up to and including the American Founding – that even when opposition to the dominant perspective is outwardly unsuccessful it can still yield tremendous benefits for society as a whole. Certainly this is how the efforts of the Anti-Federalist ought to be regarded.

Consider, to that end, the writings of one Cato, author of seven letters published in the New York Journal over the winter of 1787/88. They were not the lengthiest efforts among the Anti-Federalist canon, to be sure, nor the most influential or well-known. Nevertheless, there is a quality of insight to the commentaries Cato put forward – and in particular Cato V – that make them particularly striking. It was not just that he took issue with the authority granted to the President, the taxing power of Congress, or certain problematic implications of the amending formula. Most of the Anti-Federalist held forth on at least one of these subjects, and often in much greater depth than Cato even seemed interested in attempting. No, it was the manner in which Cato approached the issues in question – the direction from which he launched his attack – that arguably set him apart. Mixing unromantic pragmatism with plain-spoken philosophical rigor, he managed to dissect and explain certain of the assumptions taken for granted by his fellow detractors of the proposed constitution in a way that was straightforward and penetrating where they could often be ponderous and even facile.

This may all have been for naught, of course. Among a corpus of literature which failed to achieve its intended purpose of foiling the ratification of the proposed constitution – even when one grants that the effort itself yielded a number of significant social benefits – it would be very hard indeed to establish conclusively that the writings of Cato in particular were much regarded at the time of their publication. Among a substantial body of literature since grouped under the heading of “The Anti-Federalist Papers,” Cato’s essays were brief – as noted above – and few, and hardly among the most famous of their number. Perhaps, then, it is only to the 21^st century reader that they appear all that conspicuous. And yet, conspicuous they are. Cato seemed to see things that his compatriots didn’t, or was more willing to explore the essence of their various shared convictions. The questions he asked and the assertions he posed may not have caused much of a stir in the late 1780s – if for no other reason than that relatively few people encountered them – but they nevertheless seemed to approach some of the fundamental assumptions that have been circulating in the world of politics and political philosophy since the fall of the Roman Republic. What is the value of elections to a free people? How often should they be held? How large should a legislature be? And how can it best be protected from corruption? Cato had answers to each of these inquiries that are arguably as valid today as they were at the time his letters were originally published. This isn’t to say that he was always right, of course, or that he was able to accurately predict the development of certain concepts in the realm of applied political science. Unlike some many of his Anti-Federalist cohorts, however, who concentrated primarily and specifically on the text of the proposed constitution and the implications thereof, Cato seemed to address himself to the broader conversation about the nature of republican government in America that the events of 1776 launched and which remains vital to this day.  

To that end, and with Cato V as our particular subject, we must now turn our attention to the topic of authorship. As with most of the Anti-Federalist Papers, the identity of the individual who originally drafted the Cato essays has not been affirmed for certain. Indeed, in all likelihood it never will be. Such was the nature of polemicists in the 18^th century Anglo-American world, of course. Anonymity was part of the standard formula, the purpose of which was both to stave off potential reprisal and to prevent individual reputation from effecting how the substance of the piece in question was considered. That being said, most scholars – though certainly not all of them – tend to agree that Cato was likely the penname of one George Clinton (1739-1812), seven-term Governor of New York (1777-1795, 1801-1804) and two-term Vice-President (1805-1812). As Clinton has only been discussed in these pages in passing – and as he presents such a fascinating figure – I see no reason to disagree with this assessment and every reason to move forward under the assumption that Cato V was his doing.

Part of what makes George Clinton so enduringly fascinating, of course, is his unusual biography when compared to those of his fellow Founders. A born and bred New Yorker, Clinton was the son of Presbyterian Irish immigrants of Scottish descent who arrived in America in the late 1720s seeking relief from a religious regime in Britain that placed often severe restrictions on the liberties of non-Anglican Protestants. Though seemingly a man of some means in his native Ireland – he evidently paid for the passage of up to ninety-four of his friends and neighbors – Clinton’s father Charles appeared to have met with some kind of reversal upon his arrival in New York that forced him and his family to spend the next several years eking out a relatively meagre existence on a three hundred acre farm in rural Ulster Country. By way of comparison, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), under whom George would later serve as Vice-President, inherited five thousand acres upon the death of his father in 1757, while the Mount Vernon estate of George Washington (1732-1799) encompassed at its height some eight thousand acres. In spite of this setback, however, Charles Clinton was evidently a man of talent and charisma who enjoyed a degree of success in public office that belied his otherwise humble circumstances. After being appointed Justice of the Peace and then Judge of Common Pleas for Ulster County – a type of civil court responsible for hearing cases in which the amount in controversy was between five pounds and twenty pounds – he gained enough favor with Governor Sir Charles Hardy (1714-1780) to secure the office of Lt. Col. of the New York Provincial Militia in 1756. In this position, granted him in the midst of the Seven Years War (1754-1763), the elder Clinton commanded a regiment during the British attack in August, 1758 upon the French garrison at Fort Frontenac (now within the bounds of Kingston, Ontario), the success of which doubtless reflected well upon his leadership.

Interestingly enough, it was at Frontenac at that Charles’ youngest son George first began to make a name for himself. Having previously served aboard a privateer in the Caribbean following the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and France, George was granted a commission in the New York Provincial Militia not long after his father’s rise to leadership therein and served alongside his brother James (1736-1812) as a Lieutenant under their father’s command. During the subsequent attack on the French position at Frontenac in the late summer of 1758, George reportedly proved himself instrumental in helping to cut off communications between that very same post and France’s North American headquarters in Montreal and Quebec City. Quite possibly in recognition of this feat – and doubtless in part due to the influence of his father – Clinton was shortly thereafter granted his first civil appointment as Clerk of the aforementioned Court of Common Pleas for Ulster Country, a position he would maintain from 1759 until shortly before his death. After next reading the law under New York City attorney William Smith, passing the provincial bar in 1764, and establishing a practice in his native Ulster Country, he was appointed District Attorney for that selfsame precinct, and then elected as its representative in the New York General Assembly in 1768. Seven years later, upon the commencement of hostilities between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in the spring of 1775, Clinton was chosen by this same body of legislators to serve as Brigadier General of the New York Militia in charge of Ulster, Orange, Westchester, and Dutchess counties.

Because these four districts bracketed the Hudson River – access to which was considered to be of tremendous strategic importance by British and American authorities alike – and because they were also home to some of the wealthiest “manor lords” in all of New York – the sympathies of which tended towards Loyalism – Clinton’s appointment was an exceedingly significant one. Widespread pro-British sympathies made the possibility of hostile infiltration a very real one, and in the event that local Loyalist landowners managed to turn over control of the Hudson Valley to the British authorities that were then occupying New York City, New England would have found itself effectively cut off from the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. Despite these high stakes – or perhaps because of them – Clinton attacked his posting with alacrity, winning both the support of the militiamen under his command and the admiration of the Continental Congress. Said body, upon the recommendation of the aforementioned New York General Assembly, accordingly offered Clinton a commission as a Brigadier General in the Continental Army, an office which he reluctantly accepted in the early spring of 1777. The newly-minted general, it seemed, though he claimed to prefer, “A more retired Life than that of the Army,” nonetheless believed it essential, “Not to refuse my (but tho poor) Services to my Country in any way they should think proper to appoint me.”

Though Clinton would remain a general officer of the Continental Army until its formal disbandment in November, 1783, his attentions were very quickly redirected back into the domestic political arena. In June, 1777, under the terms of New York’s inaugural constitution as a free and independent state, he was elected Governor by a narrow margin of 1,828 to 1,199 over Philip Schuyler (1733-1804), one of the aforementioned Hudson Valley manor lords and a man whose pedigree stretched back to the 1650s and the settlement of the Dutch New Netherland colony. In light of Clinton’s comparatively humble origins, his victory in 1777 was viewed by New York’s patrician elite as something of an upset. His defeated rival Schuyler accordingly communicated soon thereafter to fellow New Yorker John Jay (1745-1829) – likewise descended on his mother’s side from Dutch New Netherland homesteaders – that the new Governor’s, “Family + Connections do not Entitle him to so distinguished a preeminence.” While Clinton may not have intended to emphasize the sense of disdain with which he was thus regarded by the state’s political elite – that is to say, he did not seem initially to view himself as acting in opposition to New York’s landed interests – his actions while in office and his ability to keep hold of the same soon enough marked him out as the terror of the Empire State’s long-standing socio-political status quo.

Clinton’s subsequent realignment of New York politics over the course of the 1770s and 1780s were made possible largely thanks to the comparatively wide-ranging authority bestowed upon the office of Governor by the framers of that state’s inaugural constitution. Whereas the governing charters of states like North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Delaware described a relatively weak chief executive elected to a one year term by a joint-sitting of the relevant general assembly – thus placing the executive authority in subordination to the legislative authority – the Governor of New York was chosen by a statewide ballot to serve a period of three years between elections. Pursuant to the popular mandate which this procedure would seem to impart, the Empire State’s chief executive was also possessed of a great many additional responsibilities besides those of seeing the laws faithfully executed and serving as commander-in-chief of the state militia. Along with reserving the authority to prorogue – i.e. adjourn – the General Assembly on their own recognizance for up to sixty days at a time – a power which, of those states named above, only South Carolina saw fit to grant its chief executive – the Governor of New York was also given the presiding seat on two exceptionally powerful bodies within the state government. One, the Council of Revision, granted the Governor, the Chancellor – being the presiding officer of the highest court in the state – and the Justices of the state’s Supreme Court, “Or any two of them,” the responsibility of reviewing any and all legislation approved by the General Assembly for the purpose of suggesting possible modifications. While this would seem to operate in practice like the veto power possessed by most chief executives in the United States as of the early 21^st century – to the point that a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly could likewise overturn a negative vote by the Council – only South Carolina likewise granted this privilege to its governor as of the late 1770s.

The other body to which New York’s chief executive was a party, the Council of Appointment, consisted of the Governor and four state senators chosen by the General Assembly from among the state’s four senatorial districts. This quintet – within which the Governor alone held the power of nomination – was possessed of the authority to name and commission, among other offices, the State Comptroller, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Surveyor General, the aforementioned Chancellor, the Justices of the New York Supreme Court, all sheriffs, all district attorneys, all lower court judges, all city and county clerks, every mayor, and all military officers. Understandably – and very much in keeping with the generally elitist and patrician tone of the Empire State’s first constitution – the existence of this committee gave the sitting chief executive a tremendous amount of influence over the composition and character of the state’s entire body of non-legislative civil officials. Elections, law enforcement, the judiciary, land sales, tax collection, municipal government, and even local record-keeping; all of these responsibilities fell within the ability of New York’s governor to effect via the appointment of certain individuals to certain offices. Likewise, given the sheer number of roles to be filled, the ability of a sitting Governor to engender loyalty and cooperation via patronage was second-to-none within the contemporary United States.

Naturally, the intention of the framers of New York’s first constitution – among them the aforementioned John Jay, Robert Livingston (1746-1813), leader of one of the most powerful factions in New York state politics, and Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) – was that the chief executive of the Empire States would use the powers granted it by said document to maintain the preeminence of the landed elite against the increasingly raucous agitations of the middling and lower classes. In the hands of George Clinton, however, they accomplished something else entirely. In addition to using a mix of patronage and populism to cultivate a broad alliance of middling professions and small-scale property owners whose interests had theretofore been ignored by the political elite – merchants, manufacturers, schoolteachers, lawyers, yeoman farmers, and the like – he also used the circumstances of the ongoing war between the United States and Great Britain to effectively create a new electoral constituency out a previously disenfranchised community. Clinton accomplished this latter feat by directly attacking the wealth of the abovementioned population of large-scale landowners whose multitude of tenants, because they rented rather than owned the property on which they lived, did not qualify as voters.

Hereditary ownership of semi-feudal estates like those of the Livingston or Van Rensselaer families – the latter of which encompassed some three thousand tenants by the time of its dissolution in 1839 – had resulted in relatively frequent uprisings by discontented renters over the course of New York’s colonial history. And though disturbances of this nature were customarily put down by colonial authorities who naturally supported the property rights of the social class to which most of them belonged, the circumstances of the Revolution added a new wrinkle to the situation. Since many of the manor lords in question, as noted above, were avowed supporters of the Crown, and since the New York General Assembly had approved legislation in 1779 – the Confiscation Act – which allowed for the public seizure of Loyalist property, it was therefore both possible and politic in the late 1770s for the government of New York to take possession of the relevant estates and see to their redistribution. This, under Clinton’s leadership, is exactly what happened, resulting in the emergence of a massive new cohort of small-scale landowners – many of them former tenants of the dispossessed manor lords – and the collection of over three million dollars in land sales by the state government. Not only were New York’s traditional landed elite greatly weakened by this turn of events, but the resulting constituency of renters-cum-yeoman proved fiercely loyal to the chief executive under whose leadership their financial emancipation was finally realized. The economic stability provided by the aforesaid land sale revenues – particularly welcome in light of the ongoing British occupation of New York City and its lucrative port facilities – likewise contributed to Clinton’s increasingly unassailable popularity, resulting in his unopposed reelection in 1780, 1783, and 1786.